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Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Marco Arment. And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is usually not longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started. So it seems like we are in the, you know, any minute now WWDC announcement phase.

kind of part of the year, right? Yes. I hope so. I really, really hope so. It is possible that any time between now and mid-May, Apple might announce WWDC. And so when this happens, I would like to strongly encourage...

our listeners out there, if you're wondering, like, is it worth going? Is it, you know, should I, you know, go through the hassle and expense and time of getting out there? Should I enter what will presumably be some kind of lottery to get to go to the Apple campus and go in person? I would say, yeah,

Treat it like... Almost like Disney World. With a disclaimer, I've never actually been to Disney World. Treat it like a cool destination vacation or a cool pilgrimage in a way. I would suggest if you have the means to get yourself there, whatever that means for you. And that's a huge if because for many people it could be quite a journey to get there. But I would say if you have the means...

Assuming they do the same thing as they did last year, which is also a big assumption, but I think it's probably a safe one. Going to the Apple campus...

and being there in person, seeing Apple Park, like all that stuff. It was so cool to just be there and see all that stuff. And it's a really cool pilgrimage. And so I would say if this gets announced between this episode and next, which we're both hoping it will, and if some lottery opens up that you can enter to go in person, I would suggest if you can swing it.

to do so because it's really cool and it's not you know it's not so much for the developer content because that will mostly be streamed like that you know that there's not going to they didn't do live sessions last year it was it's more of like here's a cool thing you can do in person if you want to and then the whole conference is actually online which which we talked about before I think is better in pretty much every way it

It's not about the content so much as the pilgrimage. And I find the pilgrimage also incredibly motivating to like to go work on my app afterwards, because I've like I've, I've been to the mothership, and I've seen all the people who work on this stuff. And it like it always energizes me to go do awesome stuff in my app and to go work harder and to adopt the new stuff and

And so there is a very strong just coolness factor to going and there's a very strong motivational factor to going. So I strongly suggest if such a lottery opens up anytime soon and you're able to go put your name in the hat. It's it's pretty cool. Yeah, I think I would definitely both concur with that as a recommendation. And I mean, there's clearly a reason why, you know, every WDC that I could have gone to in person that I have been to since 2009. Yeah.

And that is in aggregate certainly quite a bit of expense in terms of time and money, but it is something that I continue to do and continue to hope to be able to continue doing because it has been so impactful, because it is so just a useful part of the year. And I think for all the things you're saying, but I think for me the biggest thing too is there is something different about physically moving yourself to a different place that is a useful mental reset for the rest of the year.

Um, you know, it's like, it creates this chapter sort of, there's the first half of the year and the second half of the year. And from my, you know, from my work life that has been really helpful to me to be able to kind of go there and for a week, be completely focused on work and what I'm, you know, what I'm going to work on for the rest of the year, what's interesting, kind of, it's very good for being creative and have you have, you know, you have an idea at WWDC and you can talk it through with like three or four people immediately, like in a way that is just different and very,

you know, cultivating for new ideas and things that you're going to kind of go into. And so I think there is just that, and you could kind of create that yourself, you know, in terms of like, you could go, you know, we talk about going on like working vacation type of situations. And if you going to WTC would not be something that would be particularly viable for you.

Trying to do something like that where you go stay in a local hotel for a couple of nights around WDC to have that same sense of like it's a focused retreat focused on work is just something that I've found very, very empowering. But certainly if you can get out to there and it's like assuming there's going to be an event like they did last year at least, something like that, I would highly recommend going.

And being really positive about trying to get there, especially if you haven't before, because maybe it's not for everybody, but it's definitely for you, for Marco and I. And I imagine we are not alone in our finding of its value.

Yeah. And, and I mean, I would even say like, even, and let me know, you know, when you lived on the East coast of the U S and had a similar flight situation, even the flights to and from, I always got a massive amount of work done when I don't usually like on, you know, usually long flights. I always think I'm going to get worked on and I never do. But for some reason, the ones to and from WWDC, whether it's like the motivation or the fact that that's just usually just me without anybody else, you know, no companions or family or anything like that.

Usually I get a ton of work done on those fights. So yeah, it's a pretty cool experience. So if you can do it, and if the opportunity opens up in the next two weeks, which we assume there's a pretty good chance of that, just timing-wise for the year, we suggest that you do it. Absolutely. So...

Now onto the actual show topic. We, uh, you know, so when you, uh, debuted the pedometer plus plus major update, um, a couple episodes ago, um, part of that update among many other things, including what appeared to be an almost total rewrite, which is no small feat. Um,

Part of that change is you actually changed the business model of Pedometer++, and you adopted a new subscription. And at the time, I believe we said, let's revisit that after a little while when you have some data and you've seen the feedback and how the existing users have received that. Because this is something that I think a lot of indie developers face, of you have an existing app with existing users, and

and you want to move it to a subscription model. And we've seen this over and over again in the industry, and it's usually really tricky to navigate that path. And a lot of times, users get upset, or the press turns against you if you have any press, or people dump your app for a competitor because they hate subscriptions or whatever. And so

That's obviously very tricky to manage. And I think you've been really, I think, unusually good compared to the industry average in terms of bringing your existing user base along through significant changes in the app.

And, you know, you are more level-headed than most of us. You are better at reacting quickly to user feedback than most of us. And so I'm curious to see – I've intentionally not been, like, you know, digging into your reviews because I didn't want any spoilers. How has this gone for you? And what have you learned in the process moving Pedometer to a subscription? Yeah.

Yeah, and I think so. So like, like the high level first is that I think it went well, like it's it's been great, basically, yes, like we're basically a month in. And I mean, it's like, you're never going to get through something like this without some people being grumpy. I mean, that is anything, regardless of what I had changed, if I change anything, there will be some, you know, group of people who are grumpy. That's just the reality of

development and improvement and change. So like that, that is not unexpected, but it has been something that, you know, I think, and we can, I imagine the rest of the episode will be talking about all the strategies I use to try and make this transition sort of smooth and easy and hopefully painless for my customers and,

But overall, they all seemed to have generally worked. And the subscription is doing well. The general user base seems happy a month in. And other than a few minor issues, I haven't had any crazy issues related to the rewrite side of things. So overall, the update went well. And I think...

Probably a good place to start is to just kind of talk through the business model history for Pedometer++ because, I mean, it's funny, I think Overcast has gone through the same kind of journey where it has definitely not been a straightforward path from, you know, version one to now in terms of what brings me to here and kind of the luggage that that means that the app is kind of carrying with it to this point.

because Panometer++ launched nearly 10 years ago, which is a wild thing to think about. But it's like in...

when the iPhone 5S launched, I launched Panamera++, and initially, the app was just completely free, no business model, no anything, because it was super simple, did hardly anything, and I wasn't even really sure when I shipped it if it was even going to really work, in a practical sense, that I had gotten my iPhone 5S,

in line, like, you know, got up at two in the morning, went and camped out in front of an Apple store, got my iPhone 5S, did a build and run. It worked. I submitted it. Like, that was where I was. And so I had, like, minimal confidence in this app. But I thought it also was really cool to be there on day one, to be, you know, right there at the start. And so...

That's how the app launched. It was just like a free app out there. Like, let's see if there's anything here. And then that was sort of where it began. And then so as a result, in a weird way, like I didn't think about this at the time, but that kind of, you know, sort of dictated some of the paths that I felt like were available to me because it meant that the paid upfront model, I

I felt like I was kind of... I had excluded as a result of going down that road, which isn't technically true. Like, I certainly could have gone down that road, but it didn't... In general, when you take something that was free and make it paid, that is where I think the biggest sort of issues and problems you'll run into regards to user and customer feedback, that, like, you take this thing that was free and you make it paid, that is so often, like, the root thing that people don't like. So I was like, okay, that's not going to be there. And so...

Then it was like, okay, well, what can I do? And this is, you know, 10 years ago, there was no in-app purchase subscription for, I don't think, may not have even been for anything, but at the very least, it definitely wasn't for just like software. Whereas, you know, in the first version of subscriptions, it was only for media and content.

And so that's definitely wasn't this. And so the first thing I did was I added a tip jar to pedometer plus plus, which I think it may have been one of the very first like tip jars in, in the app store. This is one of the few that I was aware of. And I wasn't even sure if it would get through app review, but I was just like, Hey, let's just see if that works. So I just added a little thing that was like, you know, small, medium and large tip. And you could, you know, kind of just freely give me some money inside of the app. And, and,

I tried that and it worked reasonably well. Like in terms of, I think the, the general feedback I got from that is that, you know, it's like it, it,

it is a good way of getting a reasonable amount of money from your most passionate fans. Um, you know, like the, the, the 10% of people who are most excited about your app are, we're very supportive and able to get into that, but it also leaves a lot of users who are completely unmonetized and that was problematic. And so then I went and added advertising, um, inside the app. And originally it was, I add when, uh, Apple introduced that. And then when Apple got rid of that, I went to add mob, um,

And it's kind of advertising became the main business model for the app for a long time. And eventually I slightly rebranded the tip jar to be more like remove ads rather than just a tip jar because that actually performed

you know, a lot better, but did a similar kind of thing where it's this, you know, it's a bit more voluntary rather than being essential. And so that sort of brings us to today where now it's a model where there's a selection of features inside the app that I put behind a paywall and I, you know, I'm now charging a recurring subscription for that. So, you know, it's the sort of $2 a month, $20 a year kind of a model for in pedometer plus plus this case, it's, you

you know, essentially all of the workout features. So the iPhone workout, uh, tracking the mapping features, uh, downloadable maps, all that kind of thing, as well as some custom icons, um,

And sort of I have some plans for things down the road, and that would be sort of most likely be premium features. But in kind of just as broad strokes, that's kind of the journey that the app has been on to get to today, which hopefully is kind of some useful context before I dive into the actual nuts and bolts for like where, you know, sort of where I am now and how I got here.

Yeah, I think it's interesting to look back over the history of such a long-running app. As you said, I have a similar timeline with Overcast having come out almost nine years ago. And

It's interesting. Actually, wait, almost 10. Oh, geez. 2014? I forget. I think it's almost nine years ago. Anyway, when it's been that long, the difference between nine and 10 doesn't really matter that much. But it's interesting. On one hand, it's useful to know what happened in the past and to know the journey that got you here and to keep in mind the lessons learned from the past. But on another level,

You can't be too concerned with the past because every new person who's coming to your app, like your entire source of growth...

is coming from people who don't know the app's history who maybe don't even know the history of apps in general back then and also even if they did probably don't care anymore you know like you know when the app store first launched almost everything was paid up front for the first few you know weeks or months um everything was like five or ten dollars uh and then very quickly went down and down and down and then eventually we got to where we are today um but you

No one today cares that most apps used to be paid up front for the first couple months of the app store. No one cares. That's not a thing at all that people care about now. But your existing customers who were there for that part of it, some of them still care. One of the issues I have with Overcast, and I've had this issue for everything I've ever done, is the people who...

bought it you know quote you know who bought the the unlock for the original 1.0 version in 2014 still expect all the benefits they bought from that unlock to be there today and it's like okay yes like thank you you gave me five dollars i think it was i don't even remember i think it was fine it's like whatever it was you gave me this amount of money in 2014 and

And I've been maintaining the app for this entire time since then, running the servers this entire time since then. If you gave me $5 in 2014 and have been using the app since then, if you don't show the ads in the app or haven't bought premium, I have definitely lost money on you by now. But...

that's my problem, not yours. And that's on me to deal with. And so if I change the business model or if I change what those people have access to now, they're going to see that as taking away something of theirs or they're going to see that negatively in some other way. And so it is ultimately my problem to deal with of like, if I want to change the business model

To match what current customers expect or to match what my current needs are financially for the app or how to cover my current costs of running the app.

That's really up to me and new customers to mostly handle because it's really hard to change what the old customers are getting or have gotten for what they paid or didn't pay without really angering your existing user base. So on one level, you have to try as much as possible not to care about the past. But some of your customers are going to care quite a lot about the past.

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And I think it's very much what you're saying there of this sort of this duality that you have to keep in your mind when you're doing this kind of work, I think is so fundamental to understand and be aware of and respectful of your existing user base who are, you know, presumably the.

They're the bread and butter of your app. They're the people you've built up over time, hopefully. This group of people who like the app, who use it regularly, that when we talk about retention, and again, you have this retention curve where whatever, 40% of people come back the first day, and then it kind of falls off from there. But at some point, you end up with this group of people who are committed to your app, who are invested in it in the sense of their time and energy and attention.

And so you want to sort of do right by them. And if you do treat them well, there's hopefully enough of them that have enough goodwill that they'll support you. But also make sure that you're not catering to them too much at the expense of your kind of future potential for growth with new customers who don't have that context, who are that for that day one person. And so I think when I'm going into my business model change for this, the thought I had in my mind, which I don't know is –

I think it was the sort of the generous and – but also like sort of like safe and wise approach as well was to say –

I'm going to try very hard to not take anything that is currently free or you could have had access before and put it behind a paywall. But I don't want it to ever feel like this thing that you had, I'm taking it away from you and now starting to charge you money. Instead, I'm going to do the work to build new and more compelling features that will augment the existing experience. And all of the new stuff is going to be paid.

And sort of my rationale for that is that if you are a current user, someone who's happy, someone who likes the app, who uses it all the time, and I make the app better, you're going to want the things that make the app better because you like the app. So why wouldn't you want the app to be better?

But if you, for whatever reason, don't want to pay for that, you can continue to still be that person who is happy and is using the app and we're all good there. And so that was sort of the way that I intentionally structured this, that I didn't take any of the features that existed before. That in some ways, if it weren't for the visual redesign stuff, it's entirely possible that some users would never know that anything changed.

And those users still have, there's still ads in the app. And so they'll continue to kind of support and be monetized in that way if they never went, you know, anywhere else in the app. But I'm also going to create this new way that if you want the more advanced features, if you want a more robust experience, if you want features that are new, then you have to be sort of on the subscription plan. And that seems to kind of be working well where...

The existing user base was fairly happy with that. If you didn't, you could have been completely unaware that this happened. The business model changed, but you didn't have to change with it. Or you can kind of become aware of that new option subsequently. That is definitely something that is possible in this model. But I think overall, that seemed to work. And I think that...

The approach I took was consciously with that in mind. And I think not every app has the benefit of that because it is very difficult to pull off because you have to essentially create a whole cloth, something of value that's worth paying for in addition to whatever your core value was initially. Because I think very often where apps get into trouble is when you have a business model for the core part of your app.

And then you now suddenly want to start charging for that core part of the app. And now you're taking something away from someone and, you know, necessarily and obviously and like quite reasonably, people are going to be upset if you take something away from them rather than sort of add something extra that they now have to pay for. And so it's definitely a difficult, like it would have been great if I just decided, hey, I'm just going to make the app, you know, subscription based. And, um, I mean, interestingly, like as a sort of a point of comparison, like I've,

In the industry that I work in, in terms of step counting, there have been a number of apps that were created, did reasonably well, and then got bought by, I don't know what kind of companies you'd call it. I don't know if it's venture or how it's sort of fundled, but there's these companies that come in and they buy an app, and then it's just like, put everything behind a paywall. It's all about using the existing search optimization for the app in the app store. And it's just like, every time you open the app, it's showing you a paywall. It's very aggressive. And it's just like,

And I'm sure it makes money, but it also like ruins the user experience. And so like, that is the other extent of this where I see that and it's like, I'm maybe there's more money there. Maybe if I'd gone that route, that would have been potentially like overall more income, but it would have been way less satisfaction for myself and my users. So instead it's like taking this approach of let's put in the work to build features that are worth paying for and then charge money for them, which I think ultimately sounds kind of simplistic and superficial, but like,

That's what I did, and it seemed to work. I think there's probably a few dozen people who are upset about this thing or saying, oh, now you're just one of these apps, always wanting to ask for a subscription, asking for money, greedy and selfish. It's like a dozen people. It's not the vast majority of people who seem pretty fair about this, that I'm just presenting this value proposition. Here are some new features that I spent a while building, and if you want them, awesome. Yeah.

This is what they cost. And that makes it very straightforward. Everything you had before, if you paid to remove ads in, you know, like 10 years ago, it still works today. It's still remove your ads. Like I'm just sort of grandfathering in all the features from before. And like, that seems to work. That's really good. I'm really glad to hear that. Cause like,

Your competitors' apps that you were talking about, about how they're just kind of ad crap fests to just – it's like strip mining attention on the App Store. Just like we don't care how terrible we make this experience. We're just going to mine these people for as much crappy ad money that we can get. And when the app becomes a rotting husk of itself, who cares? We'll move on to the next one.

And that is a huge economy, and that is a huge part of the App Store, a part of the App Store that still both baffles and disappoints me that Apple allows to exist at all through the process of app review that's protecting us from bad experiences in theory. But setting that aside, Apple permits this and profits heavily from this because what that industry is mostly for is…

We're going to buy as many installs as we can, oftentimes using search ads where Apple profits again. Thanks for that. So, you know, lots of, you know, money going in to buy installations because they know they're going to strip mine the attention for ad money once it's installed until the user realizes, oh, God, I'm so tired of these stupid ads and, you know, and moves on. Yeah.

And that's a game that if you cross into the purely cynical revenue-maximizing mode, you play that game then. And then you're competing with all of those people and all of those apps. And the fact is, they're probably better than you at that game.

because you care too much about people and quality. So if you want to, you can play that game. Like if that's your industry and you want to play that game, you can play that game. And look, someone wins that game that, you know, it could be you, maybe not, but you know, it could be you. But when you're instead focused on the quality market, that's a different game that you're playing, a very different market. And

That is a much smaller part of the app store by volume, but it's also – I mean, for me, it just feels a lot better to play in that game. And that's – I think when we are talking about the wonderful life of being an indie app developer –

That's more what we're thinking of than the strip mining people's attention for as many ads as you can get before they get tired of your app and delete it because it doesn't quite do what they wanted and it's full of so many ads they can't get anything done. We've all seen those apps in the app store. Oftentimes on our kids' devices that we have to delete or filter or whatever or our relatives or whatever. But

And it's much nicer to not play that game if you don't have to. And fortunately with Pedometer, you don't have to. And you don't play the game with any of your apps. And I don't either. And I'm really happy not to play that game. And so I think it's important when you are looking at revenue strategies, ad strategies, etc., to recognize which of these games you're actually playing and which one you want to be playing and which one you are potentially good at or want to be good at. Because...

If you push too hard and you fill everything with ads and you maximize every opportunity, again, that puts you in a different category of app and the quality market will abandon you. And then you're just competing with the pump and dump market and they're going to be better at it than you. Yeah. And I think too, it's the sense of, are you trying to build a business that can last for years and years that...

And making this change in Pedometer++ 10 years almost into its life, and I am sort of making this change to hopefully make the next 10 years of this app viable.

And that's just a different mentality. That's a different mindset. What I want is a core group of users who love the app, who care a lot about it, who are my marketing division, essentially. I don't have to do marketing because my customers do my marketing for me because they like the app and they'll tell it to a friend or show it to someone or those kinds of things. That's what I'm buying with that. That goodwill turns into...

These other divisions of, I don't have a growth marketing team. I don't have all these things that you could imagine if you start to go in a different direction that you would need. I'm instead paying for those with goodwill instead. I think my hope is to just have a model that is sustainable. I think ultimately for the indie life

I think sort of having ads plus a small sort of not, not inconsequential, but to have, have a subscription that is available for your most sort of interested users seems like a great model. It seems sustainable. It seems like it creates, you know, sort of consistent revenue over time, which means that I can continue to focus on improving and my incentives are aligned with my customers incentives that if they're happy, I'm happy and,

rather than working in any way across purposes. And I think that is the thing that ultimately is a great guiding principle as you're thinking through business model changes or how you're going to structure things. It's like, how would I respond to this if I was a user? How would I think about this? Would I be happy? Would this increase the satisfaction I would have in using this app? And if that's the case, if you're doing things that are only going to make people happy, like, oh, wow, that's a great new feature. I want that. Oh, it cost me money. That's cool.

in a way that I'm never taking things away or trying to create these moments of disappointment or sadness because it's a different kind of disappointment if you see a cool feature and you say, oh, wow, it costs something versus the disappointment of going to check your steps in a day and they're just not there. That's a very painful different kind of discouragement that I chose to avoid and maybe I'm leaving some money on the table but I will leave that money on the table and walk away happy as a result. And sleep at night. Exactly.

Thanks for listening, everybody. And we will talk to you in two weeks. Bye.