Welcome to the 5th 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 sit down with Mike Amerson, founder of Wet Productions, creator of Virtual Girlfriend App and author of a book on App Discoverability called The best book on IOS app Marketing and extract (that sounds painful doesn’t it?) some great tactics and strategies that he’s using right now today. You’ll learn:
*Valuable app marketing lessons and the best app marketing channels
*The best areas to focus your time and energy
*How to recognize the biggest opportunities in the App Market
*Suggestions and advice when you are starting to build an app network
Check out the video and leave your comments and feedback below…
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Download Appreneur Podcast Episode 5 Transcripts
TRANSCRIPTS:
Len: Welcome to AppClover’s Appreneur Appcast. Today we’ve got a great show for you. I am Len Wright, cofounder and CEO of AppClover.com. Along with me today is my partner Matthew Lutz, cofounder and COO of AppClover, and Jeff Williams, CEO and founder of Weblance.com. Welcome, Jeff. Today we have got a special guest; we have Mike Amerson founder of WET Productions.
Mike is a veteran game developer who has had many roles — that’s not Mike — in the last 12-year span of his career including art director, project manager, creative director, business development and marketer. He has published 10 video game titles including credits on megahits such as Star Wars: Empire at War, Call of Duty and World at War. In 2009, Mike ventured into the mobile space with the release of the hit IOS game My Virtual Girlfriend, which was featured on MSNBC, Kotaku, and the late-night TV show Lopez Tonight with comedian George Lopez.
Between paid and free on IOS alone, his apps are up to 1.7 million downloads. Yes, if we had a cheer, we would have the audience here. Mike learned to overcome the obstacle that many developers, and you probably face today, which is app discoverability, which we are all facing. He even wrote a book on the subject which we’re going to talk about today, called The Best Book on IOS App Marketing — I love that — in which he explains to other indie developers and Appreneurs how to overcome the obstacle of app discoverability, and offer strategies that all indie developers and Appreneurs should be using to maximize their marketing efforts.
Wow, what a long intro that was, eh, Mike? Welcome.
Mike: Yes. Hey, guys.
Len: We’re really pleased to have you with us today, and I promise the rest won’t be that long and outstretched. We are really going to get into some meat, and into some really juicy subjects today about discoverability. Maybe we can start it off, Mike, by just sharing a little bit more about your background, anything I missed or anything else, and how and why you got started in the app business.
Mike: Okay. Like a lot of people, I was a developer; I’ve been in software development for 12 years now. I just kind of wanted to venture out on my own, because I got sick of the grind. I wanted to get into doing my own apps. I had gotten into the videogame industry just for the reason of being able to develop my own games, so I needed to learn the process. I think a lot of people, a lot of developers get into that, they have their own ideas that they want to pursue.
This was kind of my time. I had been working in the industry, I had been grinding, I had been doing the crunch modes for a number of years. I said, “Okay, why don’t I just put something out and kind of test it?” IOS is a real great testing ground. It’s a low barrier to entry with just a $100 fee for the licensing. Development — all you need is a really small team. We developed My Virtual Girlfriend with just two people. These are kind of my reasons for wanting to branch out on my own.
Len: Good for you. Number one, pat on the back, because a two-people team to be able to make those numbers and be able to put everything together, we know what it takes to be able put businesses together and it’s a lot of work; a lot of effort. Right on, congrats there. Let’s get in and tell us about your apps — the success, the milestones you’ve reached, and what market they fill.
Mike: Okay. We initially put out My Virtual Girlfriend back in March, I believe it was, or May 2010. It didn’t do so good. I was still working full-time, so was my partner. We were both working at other development companies full-time. It got a lot of reviews because of the controversial nature of a virtual girlfriend. Just title alone brings a lot of people to a curiosity to see what it’s about. We have that going for us, and that was kind of intentional. I wanted to create something that could grab up steam in an organic way that way.
We ended up putting out an update, and fixing and addressing a lot of concerns that the players were having with it. Then we ended up with another update. Four updates later is when it really started to take off. Other than that — prior to the four updates, I’m kind of moving ahead a little bit too quick here. Prior to the four updates was an eight-month span; during that time, it was only pulling in about $30 a day — 30 sales. We didn’t have a free version, it was just kind of limited to the paid version. We wanted to improve the game playing experience up until that point, so that’s why we did the updates.
Eventually it turned out to be pretty good, so I did a big marketing push in December of 2010. That’s right when we started getting all of the coverage from MSNBC, Kotaku, George Lopez Tonight, Discover Magazine.
Len: It’s interesting, because most people you talk to out there go, “Your launch period, your first when you’re out the door is the most important thing.” And on and on. This is really interesting because it didn’t do so well. I bet you a lot of people that are going to be watching this are at that point, where they have launched and it didn’t do as well as they maybe wanted it to. The cool story that you just pointed out is then you did a marketing strategy afterward, and look at how much you got.
Maybe we can delve a little bit more into that, too. Reaching that over 1 million download mark must’ve been pretty exciting. It’s got to be that feather in the cap type of idea. Share some valuable marketing lessons you’ve have learned along the way. People have already realized, like you said, if they’ve gone out of the gate and the horse was lame, how do they fix it up? How did you do that and pull it up?
Mike: The big thing that we did was with press release, and a lot of focusing our attention directly on the marketing aspects. One thing, as developers when we are focusing on the game play and trying to put a good product out there — I’m really not much of a salesman, personally. I tried a car salesman job for two weeks and I quit; it was just a really bad experience for me. Yes, I’m not that good at selling my own stuff, actually. But it was a matter of, hey, you have to be proud about what you’re putting out. Prior to that, I wasn’t very happy with what I was putting out. When I did get to that happy point and I was addressing the concerns of the people, then I said, “Okay, now I really believe in my product.” By doing so, then I started investing the time and energy into it.
At the same time, the company I was working for folded, which was Instant Action. As they went down I said, “Okay, I just have to do a big marketing push.” I’m going to put all of my time, my 8-10 hours a day that I was doing at my normal job, and just start pushing in this direction. The press release was huge for me, because I could leverage the My Virtual Girlfriend title. I knew that had some legs, because it got the attention and the curiosity of a lot of people. That was a big huge thing for me. Then we did a few ads; we kept the budget under $1000 total for each update.
Len: Nice.
Mike: Yes, it was a very indie thing. I wasn’t out there buying expensive ads or anything, just little websites here and there to try and get some kind of exposure with that. Then we geared the game up. You have to have a good icon; I could really go into all of the different methods for what it takes to really make your game pop.
Len: Just even grabbing a few type of ideas. It’s true, we will end up getting back and doing more podcasts in the future with you and stuff like that. The rest is covered in your book as well, so I suggest people check out the book as well.
Matt: I just ordered it, by the way. I haven’t gotten it yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
Len: Nice. Maybe go into a few of those points that would help some of the developers that are out there in your position like you were back then. They are there now and going, “What do I do? I don’t have a big budget. I don’t have a budget at all.” What are some simple things that they can do to really make that difference?
Mike: I leveraged a lot of social media because it didn’t require a big budget. Facebook fan page is pretty huge, but you want to start on gearing up fans of that early. Facebook is always changing their pieces internally to where sometimes they publish a friend’s posts and sometimes they don’t, but at the time they were. We were able to really leverage that. That had some legs.
Twitter is another really good one, although Twitter isn’t as strong as Facebook, because you have to be a little bit more — I want to say modest with Twitter and with pushing these things out on people. You don’t want to directly try and sell to them by saying, “Hey, download my game.” People just kind of ignore that kind of spam. If you can engage them in some way, such as polls or questionnaires or, “Hey, what do you think we should put in the next upcoming update?” And try to get them actively involved. Then that brings awareness to their mind at the same time, so that helps a lot.
Len: That engageability is huge.
Matt: I have a quick question regarding that. Obviously you didn’t have the out-of-the-gate explosion of success; you ramped up, and so forth, and you’ve had a few updates. How much weight did you put on customer feedback and stuff like that? The reviews and stuff that went into your updates?
Mike: That’s a good question. I would say we put a considerable amount of weight, but not 100%, because we were limited by the technology that we could do and we were limited by Apple. One of the big requests we get on My Virtual Girlfriend is more sex. Obviously, we can’t do that. It’s difficult…
Matt: Sounds like a real girlfriend.
Mike: Right. It’s difficult to try and explain that to any customer that writes me. I would just sit there and type, “We can’t, Apple’s policy on that…” and so on and so forth. Eventually it was just, okay, we will kind of avoid the issue altogether and try to give them something of what they want, but without pushing the boundaries with Apple. We were able to weigh in all of the other things that we could do technologically or legally, and then put those out there and just let the customer kind of drive the experience.
Another one of the requests that we were getting a lot recently is more mini games, and actually involvement with mini games that you can do with your virtual girlfriend. I think that’s a great idea, so we want to start incorporating little mini games, like little bowling games or maybe a little card game or something. We’re kind of playing around with different ideas on that now.
Matt: The idea behind that, is there going to be some sort of reward or virtual currency or something that is rewarded people? Like, basically, you’re working into a gaming theory within a game essentially, right?
Mike: Correct. Actually, on this next update we’re adding virtual currency, and we’re doing in-app purchases, too, adding some bikinis and some lingerie. We’re trying to give them a little bit more of the sexiness they’re looking for, but without actually going down that adult route.
Len: That’s a hard line to walk, too.
Mike: It is, because it’s really gray with Apple; they do not disclose exactly where that line is. You will know it when you cross over it when they reject you, and other than that they don’t say anything.
Matt: I would be curious to hear — I definitely want to hear back from you after you guys have released that and have a little bit of time under your belt, and see what kind of results it yields. Just because it’s our human nature, we are competitive beings. Anything we can do — I always call it, I don’t remember who I heard this from, but the drop box model. It’s basically, “Hey, tell your friend and get more space.” It’s the same thing; anytime we can unlock anything, we want to do it. We want to keep going, it’s just we’re competitive.
Mike: That’s another thing, I wanted the game to help boost up the engagement and boost up the virility. It is the achievements. We started adding achievements to our game because achievements were big; they were happening on Call of Duty. The game that I was working on for Instant Action, it was like a Facebook Guitar Hero game, so I was learning a lot about how to go the Zynga route with trying to drive installs.
Achievements were one of the things that people really liked a lot. One of the achievements is, “Hey, share this with a friend.” When those OCD players that say, “Hey, I need to do all of these achievements.” One of them is, “Share it with your friends.” When they want to collect all of the achievements, that was just another little push that we did to help.
Matt: It’s addictive, man. That is incredibly smart. It’s funny, this is not app related, but is it QuiBids? They have all of these badges and seals and stuff. I was completely addicted for like a week and a half. I was like, “I need to quit because I’m going to spend all my money.” I kept buying all of these bids and stuff just because I wanted to earn — not because I wanted to win all of these prizes and stuff, it was more because I wanted more badges than everyone else.
Mike: Yes, you touched on a good subject, Matt. It’s the feeling of accomplishment that the player wants to receive that reward for when they do something, whether it’s earned or not earned.
Len: Yes, the psychology behind it is pleasure. We feel good when we accomplish something, the endorphins are released in us, and we feel more of ourselves. That is something that all products really strive to. That is a really good point. The unlocking of those other levels through that pleasure, through that accomplishment is really strong, because we’re talking addiction or an addictive ability — not strong as an addiction, but an addictive quality. Look at games, that’s what they are taking in; the distraction methods that they use. To some people, it is like an addiction. If you follow the same psychology as that, you lead them on by better and better and better; the carrot gets a little bigger, the carrot is over here, the carrot is over here. They just follow. It’s really about training and engaging the users.
Mike: Yes, exactly.
Jeff: Which is why I put Battlefield 3 back on the shelf.
Len: This brings us in — it’s good. With constantly shifting and evolving monetization methods and opportunities that are out there, what methods do you see working today that you see working for the next little while? What do you see coming of that in the future?
Mike: Cross-promotion; I think that’s huge right now when you can cross-promote with another app or within your own app. For example, I have 1.9 million downloads that we’re up to now across our apps. When I release a new game, what I want to do is take that 1.9 million and notify those players however I can, whether it is through e-mail or whether it’s directly in the app. Directly through the app would be the most effective method, because it doesn’t require you to log into a regular computer, and so on and so forth.
Len: Yes, that second step.
Mike: Without having that barrier in the middle like that, you just click on a button and it launches a new game. There are a bunch of ad monetization companies out there like Play Haven, ChartBoost, Tapgage that offer these kind of services now, and they are available for every developer. Many of them also offer cross-promotional deals where you can just do direct deals with other developers, exchange one-to-one traffic.
I don’t see the big competition that others do between one developer to another in the same space. In my opinion, when you have Game A that is similar to Game B, I think both games can be profitable. If a player enjoys a specific type of game, they are probably going to enjoy the other game too. I think that’s good when you can cross-promote with other games of similar genres. It’s not like the console wars where you were fighting for shelf space at Best Buy, because the consumer has $60 this month. They’re only going to spend that $60 once, and it’s either going to be your game or theirs.
I see the iPhone enthusiasts and players that buy 30 games a month, or install 30 games a month. I have like 300 and some on my phone, personally. How many do you guys have?
Matt: I got a new phone recently and I wiped it out; I’m starting from scratch. I forgot to transfer all of my contact information, I was not smart that day. I only have like four screens worth right now.
Mike: Right. Still, that’s a lot, right?
Len: What was that stat that we just ran across a while ago? The average smartphone user will have 37 apps on that – do you remember that, Matt or Jeff?
Jeff: I think you’re right, they have got in the 30s.
Len: Just across the board as an average. The average smartphone user will have approximately 37 apps on their phone at any given time. They also said that the figure for 2017 was just astronomical about how many downloads.
Matt: Yes, I have the numbers here. It was a report that the Wall Street Journal created and distributed last month, in August, and it’s 136,000,000,000 apps are predicted to be downloaded by 2017, and the average smartphone user downloads 37 apps per year, I guess. This is kind of cool, too: The average smartphone user in the US spends 94 minutes per day using apps. That is crazy, that’s an hour and a half a day.
Len: And it’s with them all the time, that’s what gets me. With the Internet, it was going up when social media came in; people were spending a lot of time on there, but when they went to the bathroom or went out to go to work, it was left at home. Now it’s with them all the time, the ability to increase the psychological — I’m going to call that the addiction factor is huge, because it’s there tempting them all the time.
Matt: When is the last time you left home without your phone and didn’t feel naked? Keys, phone, hat, done.
Mike: And wallet.
Matt: Maybe wallet.
Jeff: The best app is the blacklist so that you can block people from SMSing you. Block your girlfriend from bothering you so you can play My Virtual Girlfriend. That’s true, I’ve done that.
Len: It’s a good segue. We were talking about opportunity in the app world. Where do you think it is right now, and where would you see it going in the next while? If you had somebody knocking on your door saying, “I’m an app developer or Appreneur. I want to get in, and I want to spend my time and energy in the right place.” Do you see any places where you would suggest they spend more?
Mike: I think it’s really going to expand, Len. Just touching back on what you were just talking about, mobility is huge. Now that we can kind of take what we had on consuls and move them over to mobile, I think that they’re going to end up bridging that gap between console and mobile. They’ll have where you can take the same game that’s on mobile, bring it back home, play it on your console through [Oya], or I’m sure Apple is going to come out with their equivalent version of the [Oya] where you can play games on their Apple TV or something. It’s secretive, but I’m sure it’s in the works.
This is where I think it’s really going to be going the next few years. You’re going to have console quality games played through your mobile devices, which you can bring back to your big TV. Play them through the big TV and get more of a big grand experience, or you can just bring it with you on the go and take it with you wherever you go.
Matt: Do you think that’s going to affect the indie developer who doesn’t have a huge budget like EA or Zynga, or someone like Activision that can create these huge, huge console quality games?
Mike: Yes, I do. I think it’s going to have the same effect that iPhone apps had to the console industry. I think that you’re going to have a mix. You’re going to have all the bigger companies like the EAs and the Zyngas, they’re going to be jumping in on the space. At the same time, the indie developer will be able to jump on the space so long as they keep the price point low for the licensing of the hardware to be able to develop on like Apple did. By opening it up and creating a lower barrier to entry, just a $100 licensing fee and you get your business fees and whatnot. For under $1000, if you have an idea you can put it out there. I think as long as they can keep that model for indie developers, then I think that will just lead to a lot more quantity of games on the hardware.
Matt: I’ll be curious to see how that plays out. One of the things — I guess the biggest thing I’m curious about is if you take a game that is simplistic in nature with graphics, like a Doodle Jump or something like that, what that’s going to look like on a 60” screen TV. Is it going to lose something? The bigger budget games, that’s a huge canvas. It makes sense, I think, but I could be wrong. I’m just curious how it’s going to play out.
Mike: I agree with you; I think that’s going to affect the business a lot. There are always those guys who like the really simple games, like they will never leave Super Mario Brothers. Generally speaking, in terms of the masses, I think it is probably going to affect the app market once the big players can get in.
Jeff: It definitely will.
Len: I think that what will happen too is the ingenuity, the creativeness, the brilliance within developers and Appreneurs as well is going to have to be upped. They’re going to have to up their game in creating something very unique that catches people’s attention and holds it there, versus the bigger companies being able to throw money at doing that. It’s going to be really getting creative for that indie developer to be able to match and compete that way.
Networks is one way that we were talking about before as how to do that. Maybe just circle around as we close up this part of it; what suggestions or advice would you give the newbie who is starting to build a network? They understand they have to build a network. I have mentioned before, also to branch off not just even app to app, but you can do other magazines in your genre, other products in your genre, because the end-use customer is the same. You can build networks that actually fan out even wider. I want to get your thoughts on building a network and starting. Where does somebody go and how does somebody start?
I was just going to say, to clarify a little bit more, the smaller indie developer may not have that network or support network built up. How did you start? Was it just in your own games, did you go to other people as well to try to cross-promote with them?
Mike: Yes, just reaching out to other people. In fact, the makers of Gummibar just reached out to me recently. They were like, “Hey, would you give us a shout? We’re an indie developer, we don’t have a lot of money or anything. I can’t offer you any monetary compensation for it, but we will promote you if you promote us during this time that we’re trying to launch this game.” Gummibar skyrocketed to one of the top 50 free apps in the US. This was from a guy who had just basically went out and contacted several different other companies and said, “Hey, pay it forward on my game and I will pay it back to you when I reach a certain level of success.”
We did that for him, we advertised his games across ours for free, and said, “Hey, just return the favor with the same duration and same amount of installs, if you can measure that. Then we’re one-to-one even like that.” That’s great.
Matt: I would say I know Len, right now, just because of our background and how much affiliate marketing we have done, that is a huge model is you reciprocate. You start off small. It’s like, “Okay, if you promote me now…” It’s exactly like you said, it’s genius. Not enough people are probably realizing that that’s something they can do; it’s just about building relationships with other developers and stuff like that, and getting out there an networking, going to the events and doing all of that stuff so you can actually meet other like-minded developers that actually want to help others succeed.
Mike: That’s it. Like I said earlier, I don’t view it as a competitive space against the other developers. I view it as a collaborative space; I think we can all stand to profit from it, we can all stand to work together and help each other out in this space. You touched on a really good point, Len, it is all about the target audience. That is what a lot of people that get into games or apps do, they don’t really consider who they are supposed to be reaching out to. That is a big issue I have.
I think that when you first start out on a game, at least what I do with my games and anytime that I was in game development. I’d create a design doc and I identify who my target audience is going to be. Is it going to be males? Is it going to be females? Is it going to be mostly males? What is the age range? What are the types of players? Is it going to be a hard-core player or more of a casual player? When you narrow these down, you identify if your game is going to have a broad appeal or a little bit more niche appeal before you begin. That way, you’re not investing all of this time and energy into something that maybe only a few people are going to end up playing in the long run.
Len: Yes, the people on the block that you live on. It’s really important, because that information — we spoke about it before — allows you to tap into their psychology of how they play, and where they’re going to play and everything else as well. There is so much intel that can be had by knowing your audience; especially like you said, Mike, at the start. Even if you have your app or your game out there already and you’re struggling with it, you can still turn around and know your market. Get to know, what is the match for your game out there? Then go and look at other apps, games, other placements in your genre that would be beneficial and share the same audience.
Jeff: You’re a developer so you have a lot of these things in your head, but for a lot of folks they are hiring a team. Your team is going to make decisions for you. You want to be in charge of all the decisions, but you won’t be. That is going to affect your playability and how the game operates. If those folks don’t understand that it’s a casual game, and maybe they’re from 12- to 18-year-olds. You’re going to wind up with an app that is marketed for a 12-year-olds and plays for 40-year-olds, and it’s really in-depth when it’s supposed to be casual. That’s really important. That’s just project planning, and I think all projects need that.
Mike: Yes. To your point, Jeff, it’s even moreso when you’re working with external teams than in internal development. It’s difficult in internal development to identify your target audience, but with external teams it is absolutely necessary.
Jeff: Yes. You know, what’s great is that you are a developer. You have the idea from your brain to your hands, it will happen. You know exactly what you want, you don’t have to think about it and it happens. But yet, you still take the effort to do the proper planning for your game. This really highlights when somebody is developing any app project and they are not planning it and they’re working with a team, it’s like shame on them, because of what you do. You actually plan it. It’s almost like you don’t need to, but you do it because it’s a quality issue.
Len: It’s one of those things that you said it almost looks like you don’t need it, the best of anybody makes it look easy. When they’re doing their job and it’s being done properly, dang, it looks easy. The best actors out there are like, “Oh, I can act. That looks easy.” It’s because they are so good that it makes it look easy. Again, we’re talking to Mike Amerson today. Look on Amazon, please, find The Best Book on IOS App Marketing. It’s a great book, and it will definitely be worth your while. I wanted to get that other plug in for you, Mike, as we were going as well. They can get it at Amazon, do you also have it on a site or is it just best to go to Amazon?
Mike: The publisher is Hyper Ink Press, so it’s through HyperInkPress.com. I believe it’s just on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com.
Len: Nice. We will mention it again later on as well. Right now we also want to bring Jeff a little bit more into the discussion, and sort of change things up a bit and open a discussion topic about app outsourcing. It’s a big huge topic out there, and we’re going to cover with Jeff, who is the CEO of Weblance. We’re also going to have Matt, my partner, and Mike also in for an open discussion on outsourcing. Guys, let’s just throw it out there. I will start it off by saying, Jeff, what do you think is the biggest lesson a newbie in the outsourcing field could be taught if you had one piece of advice that you could give them?
Jeff: Actually, what we just talked about, which is the reason I spoke up because I am so passionate about that. You cannot underestimate the necessity to plan. If you are working with a team or even by yourself, you have to plan your project. You have to create milestones to check in with, maybe not even just yourself, that you are achieving what you want to achieve. Those milestones need to have detailed specifications so that your developer or your designer or your tester can make sure that things are being deployed the way that you want them to be.
For me, number one is planning. Of course, I think you’re not going to get very far unless you hire the right people, which, God, I could talk for hours on that. Planning is my own personal thing.
Len: Mike, I will hand it over to you. Do have any questions that have been burning and you would like to find out from somebody who is in the outsourcing game?
Mike: I don’t have any specific questions yet regarding that, but I do kind of have a comment to that. I did try doing some outsourcing, and I got in with the wrong people because it was affordable. It was cheap. I think that is a big attractor for a lot of people. It was just nightmarish. The kid kind of preached about what he could do, and he couldn’t perform at any level of anything. That just kind of flopped. I guess my question in that case would be, what do you recommend for being able to identify somebody that is not just hyping themselves up?
Jeff: Can I ask, when you hired this person, were they able to give you samples of their work and all that kind of stuff?
Mike: No.
Jeff: That’s the number one thing, I think, when you’re hiring is to make sure that you’re looking at their work. Sometimes it’s a little bit hard to validate if it’s their work, but one thing I’ll say is that if they are truly performing the service that they are selling you, which you want to make sure they are doing on a regular basis, then they should have a plethora of work to give you. Common things are, “Oh, I have an NDA, I can’t share it with you.” Or, “I’m not allowed to tell you who my clients are.” It’s all absolute BS. There really is no problem with you looking at their work.
I will tell you that the DMA, the Digital Millennium Act says that all code belongs to the developer permanently, forever. For instance, if I paid you to write it, then it’s yours. It is powering say my website and I’m using it, but at any point, legally, you can come back and tell me that I have to pay a lease fee for that. If I don’t, you have to take it down. If I don’t, you can sue me. When you deliver that code to me, you release that code and you sign a statement that releases that code to me. This does not happen 99.9% of the time. For somebody to tell you that they can’t share the code with you because of a nondisclosure agreement, well, they own the code unless they have signed a release turning it over to the new owner. That is a complete BS statement, legally and all of this other kind of stuff.
That’s the number one thing, I think, is how many samples can they give you? Can you look at it? If the answer is no, then move on.
Matt: I’ll take it a step further, just because part of my background – Mike, I think we’re similar here because you’re an art director, right? Was that in advertising or was it in gaming?
Mike: Games.
Matt: Okay, I come as an art director and creative director, but in advertising. Obviously different industries, but the reality is I can’t tell you how many designers I interviewed that had great portfolios. They showed me samples, it didn’t mean it was theirs, or they worked on a portion of it or whatever. Same thing for writers, for programmers, for developers; the same thing is possible for any of them to show you any work.
I would say one thing to take it a step further besides seeing stuff is to set up a project. Once you see something, you’re feeling confident and everything, I would set up a small milestone project. Something really simple. Just set up a one-day project. It will cost you a couple dollars, but it’s going to save you a lot of headache. If they get it, they don’t ask questions. They just deliver it, here you go, done, easy-peasy. Okay, cool, it’s somebody that maybe you could move forward with. The only thing is to ask for references; it’s that simple. Find out the people that they have developed an app for and then contact them. Don’t just ask, but contact them and follow up with them. Stalk them until you can actually pin them down and find out what the experience was like.
Len: If they’re in the same genre, then ask them if they want to cross-promote.
Mike: There you go.
Matt: Exactly.
Jeff: Guys, I’m going to give a shameless plug. Does anybody mind? On Weblance we did that. One of the biggest issues you have when you hiring on the freelance marketplaces, you’re like, “I’ve got a $1000 project.” We create a $1000 milestone, I pay you a third now, a third later and a third later. It’s impossible; there’s too much risk for everybody. One of the things we did is after you plan your full project, you take one milestone at a time and a milestone is a couple hundred dollars. You get to look at the work before you actually pay. Your exposure is less, you can validate the work. My thing is, if it ain’t right on the first milestone, hire somebody else.
Mike: That’s a good point, break it down by milestone. I never thought to do that. That’s how you do it in console development.
Matt: I’m going to give you a plug too, Jeff, because this is something else you shared and I think this is a really good service that’s offered. They actually have people within their network that you can pay that actually review codes to make sure that it is not sloppy, it’s good code, it’s proper. You can actually not only see functionality, but have somebody else who knows coding go behind the scenes and validate it for you.
Jeff: Yes, a third party in there to look at it. Check this out. It costs you $20 or $30 to have somebody spend an hour reading what your team is doing. It is so worth it, because it takes all of the risk away. That’s before you pay for the work that they have provided. You finish a milestone, it’s a $200 milestone, you pay $30 for somebody to review your code. If it’s good, pay them. If it’s not, hire somebody else, nothing lost.
Mike: That’s a nice service.
Len: I find that that’s great, because especially people that are outsourcing. More than likely they are not the developers, or they don’t have the time to be able to be doing that. That’s great, Jeff. This is a question that I hear every once in a while – are there any countries that are favored for the outsourcing, and what reason? Is it a myth or is it true in your opinion?
Jeff: There are business cultures in different countries that you have to be able to navigate in order to stay out of trouble. In India, you have a lot of apartments full of 50 people and they are all on their laptops, and there are desks right across the room, and they are shoulder to shoulder. They just have no care about quality. You have to be very careful to make sure you’re looking at the building they’re working at, their work environment. Ask to do a video meeting with them so you can kind of look around and see what they’re doing.
If you go to Eastern Europe, it’s a different thing altogether. You have a lot of freelancers and, again, overselling is a common thing that happens over there. Wherever you go — believe me, in the US we have our own set of issues in the freelance and outsourcing world. It’s not that it’s a foreigner thing; everywhere you go, there is a business culture that you’re going to have to navigate.
Len: The one common in it all, Jeff, is that you are all dealing with humans.
Jeff: Absolutely. The Internet especially, it is the Wild West. You don’t walk into a town and just start shooting up the saloon. Look at the code, check those references, that kind of thing. That’s the only way you can stay out of trouble.
Matt: One of the last things I wanted to mention. I’m human, and Len and I are both human. We recently made a mistake with…
Jeff: I’m not human, by the way.
Matt: Jeff gave me nonhuman advice, and we didn’t take it because we were totally attracted to the price. We hired someone, tested them out on a really, really small project. We did set up a small milestone. Completely under-delivered, we were over-promised and under-delivered, and then had to go through the firing process. It actually was misconstrued and then it was confused, and then I had to re-fire, and then refire again, which is not something that I like to do so it was a lot of fun on my part.
My point is, it was just that one first thing. The fact that the response to the e-mail missed a couple of questions, but the only thing I saw was the price. I was like, “Okay, price. Who cares if they didn’t answer the questions properly?” That’s a learning lesson, and it’s one of the things that you know that going into it. I still made the mistake.
Len: I dove into that head-first. I looked at the price and I went, “Whoah. Look at how much we can get done, even if it’s not perfect.” Blinders on and looking at the price, shiny object. It was basically paying a really low price for a headache. It still was too much, because we ended up paying for more work.
Jeff: One thing to keep in mind is this is very common in India, is that they will advertise $10 an hour. What they will do is they will work longer on your project in order to recover that profit that they would make at the $20 or $30 an hour rate. This isn’t something that happens infrequently. By the way, on Weblance, if they do any of this stuff we kicked them off. The bottom 10% goes every month no matter what. We read code, so if anybody files a complaint with Weblance, we will read the code. If it’s not any good they’re not getting paid, your money will be refunded, and we will help you find a better freelancer. We don’t want to have any this problem that’s going on with oDesk and Elance; $10 an hour, but then they work 50 hours and it should be only a 10-hour project.
Len: I guess it really comes down to the point where whatever culture you’re in, it’s still dealing with people, and the personalities, the belief systems, the moral and ethic type of personality they have, the characteristics all play a big part. It’s really about relationships when it comes right down to it, too.
Matt: To that point, my last thing that I would like to add is all of my best contractors, freelancers, outsourcers have all come from referrals of other people that have used them. This is another reason why it’s important to meet other app developers and Appreneurs, and get in their circles and find out who they are using. Half the time they’re more than happy to say, “This guy kicks ass in graphics, use him.” “This guy will blow your mind in whatever.” They are more than happy to do that if they’re not using them full-time or whatever, because they want to support people that helped them along the way.
For me, that is the most powerful way of finding people. We have got a handful of people working for us right now that are all based on referrals, and they have all worked out awesome.
Len: You can find those and connect with those. We’re going to actually add a community section onto AppClover.com, so that you guys can actually connect in-between as well with each other and talk about things that are working and not working. Up until that point, we can cover that stuff. In these types of podcasts we’ll be talking more about it.
Jeff: I was going to say, I have a business idea that I want to give away for free; anybody who wants to do this. Create a website, and before you work with a freelancer, they can register on there. That way, if you have a bad experience, not only can you leave a full report and a profile that they can’t take down, it will be like a TRW but online freelancers. Then they can also wear a collar, so that way if your site doesn’t come out right their head explodes. That would be great.
Len: That, I would like to mention, is Jeff’s opinion; not shared by AppClover or its subsidiaries.
Jeff: If you have ever lost money on outsourcing…
Len: We have, but fortunately it hasn’t been a lot. In closing, again, I want to plug your book again, Mike, but I want to let you do it. Mention where people can get it and what’s in it for them. I’m going to hand it over to you to do that before we close.
Mike: It’s called The Best Book on IOS App Marketing, and it is at Barnes & Noble.com or Amazon.com.
Len: Nice. I know, Matt, we just bought it. I suggest everybody that’s listening to this ongoing continue listening to it, but right now just go and buy the book. Get Mike’s book because it’s going to help.
Matt: First of all, you said we just bought it. I just bought it.
Len: I know, that’s the perception. You will send it to me. Are there any closing thoughts, guys? Anything else you wanted to add either to Jeff or to Mike, Matt? Any of these guys.
Matt: I just wanted to mention. I don’t know, Jeff, if you’re still offering the same offer to our community.
Jeff: Absolutely.
Len: Maybe mention what that is, Jeff.
Jeff: If you go to Blog.Weblance.com and sign up for beta, then you are going to get a free premium membership, which was $240 a year that you don’t have to pay for.
Len: Nice, sweet deal. Everybody, we thank you for being with us today. We really appreciate it. For myself, Len Wright, and my partner Matthew Lutz, and Jeff Williams from Weblance, we thank you Mike for being with us. It was an enjoyable conversation, and we would really like you back again as well to carry on even more.
Mike: Thank you. I would love to.
Len: Right on, good luck with your book. Everybody, thank you again for watching, and we will see you next time.