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Ask HN: How to (best) monetize a beta?
Hi all,
Suppose that your product is going into beta, with potential for 1,000s of beta testers. But being a small company, you would like to try to get a little money now to ease development costs for the next few months (you wouldn't want to take more investment and dilute your equity just to solve a temporary cash flow problem). You don't expect your beta to last long (2-3 months), and you don't think you'll have trouble finding users for it.
What is the best way to monetize your beta?
One of the scenarios I thought of was selling discounted licenses of the release version (presales) before it comes out. This way, you get some money, the customer gets a discount and possibly a "trial" period. Also, it lets you know that your beta testers have a vested interest in your beta.
A complication or interesting point is you could make the beta private/paid only. But what if you wanted the beta to be public and still have paid users for presales? Would the discount be enough to not anger customers over the fact that some have (essentially) paid to use it and others haven't?
What do you think about this scenario? What are some other possibilities?
- briandoll 16y agoIt sounds like you haven't decided if you'll be offering a free trial version once your beta is over. I'd recommend simplifying things a bit. Determine what you _think_ your go-forward pricing model will be. Offer a free trial or don't. During your beta period, offer X% off (20%? 50%?) discount. You could decide if you want to maintain that longstanding discount for those customers, or cut it off after some period of time. Personally, I'd recommend a very long discount period, possibly infinite on a given level of subscription/licenses, in order not to piss off what may be your most valuable customers.
- b00ya 16y agoJust to clarify, there will be no free trial version once the beta is over. The licenses are single seat dev licenses for the time being. It is an intriguing idea to maintain the discount level for early bird customers on down the line. Thanks for the input.
- b00ya 16y agoThere is also a chance to have a "trial period" in the sense that you give them a 30 day money-back guarantee. Hence, it will still be a paid trial because they have to pay upfront in order to use it. Or yet another would be to have a fully free trial (no upfront cost) just to get more people to try it out, but then you have to worry about converting those free-trials into paid users, which might not be ideal if you're looking for cash now.