This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
If you ever have an idea and think, somebody should invent this. If you ever like woken up in the middle of the night and thought like, I've got this great idea for an invention. There's a couple of my ideas. I've thought about a popcorn maker that sits by your bathtub, 'cause I don't think that exists right now. You know, maybe somebody can go and make it.
Or perhaps a Bluetooth device that blows out candles from across the room. Because who wants to actually get up and walk across the room and blow out the candle manually, like old school. As I said, those are just two of my brilliant ideas. And I share them with you because I'm not afraid you're going to steal them. You know, I mentioned this sometimes, like people are always afraid.
I can't tell you what my idea is because somebody's gonna steal it. Most of us are far too busy to think about stealing somebody else's ideas. But, you know, if you want those, go for it. I offer them to you freely. And by the way, welcome to side hustle school.
My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host. Today's story is all about someone who has an idea and then it makes it happen. His idea might even be better than mine. Okay, the idea, when an engineer is searching for the perfect way to start his day, he invents a way to be woken up by his favorite podcasts. That's right, it is the podcast alarm.
Pretty cool story. Gonna tell you how it all came to be in this episode. Engineer invents podcast alarm clock. That story is coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]
In December, 2018, Jonathan Wilson was searching for something to help him get out of bed.
He wanted to be motivated to start the day and thought the perfect way to do that would be to have a podcast wake him up. He looked around the app store but couldn't find any app that would function as both an alarm and a podcast player. All he came across was an old Android app that had been taken down and a few people asking on Reddit and Quora if an app like that existed. Although Jonathan was disappointed that he couldn't find the app he was looking for, he was also a little excited. If other people were looking around for the same kind of app, one that didn't exist, he had a strong feeling there was a significant consumer base for the idea.
From the beginning, Jonathan decided he was gonna try and make this process as inexpensive as he could. His money and access to third party expertise were limited, so he knew he had to do it himself. To start the process, he made a list of the things he needed the app to do. First, it had to be able to download a podcast episode. After that, it had to be able to play the episode at a specific time.
Since Jonathan wanted to combine an alarm app and a podcast app into one, he downloaded both kinds of apps and figured out what made each of them successful. He then took the best parts of them and combined them into one. And just as a fun fact here, the second task of playing that episode at a specific time was harder to figure out than the first task. The alarm was easy, but how do you get the podcast player to integrate with the alarm clock? That was his challenge.
From there, he made a mock-up of his idea. While some people go straight to designing online, Jonathan suggests using paper and pencil. He also printed out an outline of an iPhone and an iPad to draw his design on. Now he was ready to start programming. To make the process easier, he used as much of Apple's existing code as possible, and they have templates for these things, which we've talked about in a couple other episodes.
He wanted to reduce the amount of individual design for a few reasons. One, it would reduce his reliance on design skills, of which he says he has none. Two, it would help him move fast and avoid delays. And three, Jonathan says that users generally care more about their experience with an app over design, and you can always redesign later if it works. Speaking of work, he worked around the clock, 'cause it's an alarm clock, and by September of 2019, Jonathan was ready to launch Podcast Alarm for the first time.
He was so excited to finally release his product, especially because he already had 300 pre-orders. Wait a second, how did he do that? Oh, he was able to find so many early customers by posting on the Reddit and Quora pages of people asking about an app like this, and then directing them to his website. This is a helpful feature that Apple makes available, the ability to have these pre-orders so that all the downloads happen at once, once the app is out. However, this strategy backfired a bit, because once he pressed the button to launch, he knew right away something was wrong.
Like an alarm that wouldn't shut off, an outpouring of angry emails suddenly bombarded him. It came from his pre-order customers. By accident, Jonathan had released an older version of the app. Oops, he was mortified, but raced against the clock to respond to each of the comments he received. Shortly thereafter, Jonathan re-released the app with a correct update and an apology.
From there, he watched as users downloaded the app and gave him feedback. Over the coming months, he took their comments and used them to improve the app even more. For example, one man was worried about the app's screen being on all night and burning the image into his phone. As it turns out, this was an easy fix. In the next update, there was no longer a risk of the image being burned into the screen.
The man who left the comment was incredibly happy and ended up leaving a five-star review. Speaking of reviews, Jonathan quickly realized that he should implement a technique that asked people to leave reviews for his app. He noticed that without a prompt, most of the reviews he would receive would be negative. However, once he added this feature to request people to leave them, once they used the app three times, the reviews tended to be much more positive. And just as a side note, this is probably why every app you use always pesters you to leave a review because they want the same effect.
One disappointment, Jonathan wrote to 100-plus tech sites and got very few replies. He was really hoping that they would help spread the word, but almost none of them even got back to him. So to increase his audience, Jonathan began to reach out to podcasters. Perhaps this episode will bring him some downloads. A little over a year since its official release, podcast alarm is bringing in a few hundred dollars each month.
In the future, Jonathan hopes to make it free. And from there, he'll have a subscription model that people can pay for with advanced features. I guess it's only a matter of time. [Music]
If you have an iPhone and like the idea of being woken up to an episode of your favorite podcast, perhaps this one, or it could be somebody else, I won't be offended, check out podcast alarm in the app store. It reminds me in some ways of the flash briefing that you can get from your Amazon Echo device.
I had one of those for side hustle school for a while. Perhaps you heard about it or checked it out. And I stopped working on it because I noticed that Amazon wasn't really supporting that feature so much. They had a pretty small user base, despite the great number of people who own Amazon Echo devices. So perhaps that will change in the future, but for now you got podcast alarm, which may be even better.
Also fun fact, the first modern alarm clock was invented in 1787, but it had a fatal flaw. It would only go off at one time, 4 a.m. So it was an alarm clock that you couldn't adjust the time. Basically, if you wanted to get up at 4 a.m., that was your device. And if you liked the idea of getting up at any other time, you had to wait for round two, essentially.
But here we are, 1787, fast forwarding a couple hundred years and then some, and we have some more options. All right, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Thank you so much for listening today. I am cheering you on wherever you are in the world, whatever you're working on. I've got more on the way, so I hope you keep listening.
My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
