Daily App Show LogoI was an early adopter of the iPhone. I bought the first iPhone that Apple (AAPL: NASDAQ) made. I didn’t buy it on launch day, but I bought it a few weeks later. When Apple announced that it would allow developers to create apps that would run on their iPhone I was pretty excited. I knew that would open a lot of doors to bring technology to our hands and ultimately anywhere we go. When Apple announced that those apps would be sold in the same marketplace that music was being sold (iTunes), I knew that it would quickly become impossible to find good apps. Fast forward to today (2014) and I can say that was a spot on prediction. I am sure I tweeted about it at one point back then.

Daily App Show is a website and podcast that I started in early 2008 to help my friends find good apps. You had to download an app in order to try it. There was no other way to see what an app would do and to this day, unless you go to Youtube or the developers website, you still can’t. My plan was to review apps and put the videos up on Youtube for everybody to see. People could watch my videos on the app and hopefully that would help them decide if an app was worth their time. These days people will download an app even if it is $0.99 and try it. Back when the App Store launched, nobody wanted to risk it and a lot of people said that they doubt people would spend money on phone apps. So wrong they were!

DailyAppShow - Podcast - iTunes What's HotI started the website under the name, “The iPhone App Podcast.” The name has changed since then to Daily App Show. At that time, I did one video per day, hence the name. Now we post videos on several apps per day, tutorial videos, news, press releases and more. Daily App Show quickly became a source of revenue for me as I found ways for developers to get more exposure for their apps. As our audience grew, I continued to find new ways to get exposure for the videos we were creating. At one point, we were the #1 video podcast in two different technology categories in iTunes Podcasts. The technology categories are the most saturated podcast categories. Today, two of our podcast feeds hold a steady space in the What’s Hot section in iTunes.

Today, there are many websites doing what we do. There are even more Youtube channels. My goal with Daily App Show is still the same, “Create quality content that increases awareness for app developers.” Daily App Show has been able to achieve some pretty decent numbers. Here are just a few:

Daily App Show makes money but we put a lot of that money back into increasing exposure for the content we create. The DailyAppShow.Com website helps over 80,000 people each day find apps, learn how to use their device or answer a question they may have. We achieved this kind of traffic through content marketing. We have been creating content that people actually want since we started in 2008. That is the goal and will continue to be the goal of the site.

I am writing this just to showcase one of the projects that I started years ago that still to this day is performing well for me. I have set off to build many things, Daily App Show is one of those things that ended up working out. When you start something that helps people, and you do it well, it will grow. This “project” started out in the spare bedroom of my house and grew into something that helped me fund other projects and provide a comfortable life for my family.

If you are thinking about starting something, the best time to do it is now. If I had waited a few years to start this website, it would have been hard for it to grow. Since I started before anybody else was doing app reviews, I had a leg up on the competition.

Even with Daily App Show there has been a lot of trial and error. Trying to grow an audience and reach more people is hard. I have tried many things including a 24/7 live stream of our video content, which turned out to be a horrible idea. The key is to try things and measure their effect. Know when to kill the idea and move on to the next thing. Failing is ok; there is wisdom in it. Knowing when to kill something and move on is maturity, which takes time to achieve. Through all of my trials and errors I have learned a lot and that translates into knowledge I use to help consult other businesses.

In the coming months I will be releasing some free online courses that will help people start their online projects. I have been very passionate about this for a long time and have wanted to create some content for people who want to do what I did with Daily App Show.

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