Today I’m delighted to announce my latest app Pod Wrangler. Pod Wrangler is a podcast client for iOS 7 that strives to make the process and experience of listening to your favorite shows as straightforward as possible. My goal is for the process of listening to be as follows:
- Choose your favorite shows
- Hit Play.
- …
There is no step 3.
Pod Wrangler takes care of downloading the episodes in the background as they are available. Intelligently choosing the next episode to play and clearing up the files after you are done with them. There are plenty of podcast apps that let you build complicated rules for managing your queues and building complex rules for file deletion. Pod Wrangler heads firmly in the other directly.
Pod Wrangler is free in the App Store. I’m trying out a new approach on the business model side of things. The paid app market on the App Store grows ever more challenging. I’ve seen this for a long time in the sales of my other apps. It is still there and you can still make a living from it but the reality is that having a diverse portfolio of apps that address different segments of the market is likely more stable.
The plan from the beginning was to include it as a add-on bonus for Feed Wrangler members. My general hope is for this community of members to become the core of my business. I want to treat them well and keep making their $19/year more and more valuable. So Feed Wrangler members get the full Pod Wrangler feature-set as soon as they login.
Having this base level of customers supporting the app means that I can then be a bit more creative with what I do for everyone else. The App Store doesn’t allow me to offer a traditional trial, but since I need to offer the app for free for members I saw it as an opportunity. Pod Wrangler is free for anyone to download and try. If someone likes the app and wants to unlock the full feature-set (push notifications, more than 5 subscriptions and no ads) they can then purchase a $2 in-app purchase. I like that I can offer this since the people who like it and choose to upgrade know exactly what they are getting.
Pod Wrangler is an opinionated app. It is built and tailored to exactly match my own podcast habits. I listen to many hundreds of hours of podcasts each year so it is a very informed opinion but my own nevertheless. I’m so happy to be able to share it with the world and see how well it fits. Enjoy.
