Depending on the complexity of the product, it's sometimes easier, cheaper, and more reliable to just build it and try to sell it than it is to do all the custo

Depending on the complexity of the product, it's sometimes easier, cheaper, and more reliable to just build it and try to sell it than it is to do all the customer development mumbo-jumbo. If you've got a beta, why not try to sell it? For a more direct answer, I've seen a lot of anecdotes (and this fits my experience as well) that a successful consumerish freemium web app gets about 1-2% free to paid conversion. Those numbers would be lower for beta to paid because of tire kickers.