3 ms·

How did you find your first beta tester?

by bkovitz 18y ago

breck 18y ago
Find an active community website(call it X) that is related to your product and post some messages in the boards offering a free trial to X members. For instance, if your product is for investors, post some messages on Fool.com or MoneyMakersGroup. If your product is for gamers, maybe something on the IGN boards. For hackers, this site would do. For car buffs, maybe CarForums.net. If it's a B2B offering, find a related vertical and look for forums or industry websites for that vertical. Again, offer a free trial or some kind of benefit to entice these customers to sign up and keep them satisfied while you work out the bugs. Generally there are very active and loyal members at these sites that are very interested in new tools that would appeal to their niche community.
- bkovitz 18y ago
  These sound like fine ideas. Are they how you got your first customer? How did that happen? I'm interested in hearing the story from start to end.
  - breck 18y ago
    Yes, for a project I'm currently working on. It's targeted toward consumers in a small niche medical community. I Google'd until I found a handful of active forums for this niche. Then I posted to the most active one. I offered a free year's trial to the first beta users. I got 12 from that site. Then after a few days I repeated that process on another forum and got 8 more. I'm working out a lot of bugs but having real users is great. So far they've been active and enthusiastic with feedback. I'm not sure whether this is the right niche for my product, but am improving it a lot with their help. I haven't charged anyone yet(in fact, haven't even setup the payment system yet), and may run into difficulty when I do launch the public product since it seems consumers are very reluctant to pay for things online. But that's why it's great to have beta users from my target market who can help me get the product to a point where it's good enough to charge.
    - bkovitz 18y ago
      Wow, so you got your initial users by posting on-line! That's interesting. So far, I had been assuming that we would have to work through our networks of friends and/or make cold calls. Cold-calling is probably the hacker's worst nightmare, but I've been revving up: "I can learn to do ANYTHING!!"
cstejerean 18y ago
From the point of view of a customer/beta-tester: If your problem solves someone's need chances are they will find you. If posting a link on one or more sites frequented by your target audience doesn't generate a single beta tester you might want to re-evaluate what you're building. For example I was a beta tester for GitHub and converted to a paying customer after the beta period. Someone must have put an announcement here about the site and since it solved my need for git hosting I immediately signed up.
subwindow 18y ago
For me, I get beta testers for a site I'm working on through my blog. I never advertised it (other than a link in my "Projects" page), and admit up front that it isn't even beta-quality yet. Still, I get about 10 signups a month. Write a blog and publish the articles on social networking sites. You'll get beta signups naturally from that.

How did you find your first beta tester?

by bkovitz 18y ago

How did you find your first beta tester?

breck 18y ago

Find an active community website(call it X) that is related to your product and post some messages in the boards offering a free trial to X members. For instance, if your product is for investors, post some messages on Fool.com or MoneyMakersGroup. If your product is for gamers, maybe something on the IGN boards. For hackers, this site would do. For car buffs, maybe CarForums.net. If it's a B2B offering, find a related vertical and look for forums or industry websites for that vertical. Again, offer a free trial or some kind of benefit to entice these customers to sign up and keep them satisfied while you work out the bugs. Generally there are very active and loyal members at these sites that are very interested in new tools that would appeal to their niche community.

bkovitz 18y ago
These sound like fine ideas. Are they how you got your first customer? How did that happen? I'm interested in hearing the story from start to end.
- breck 18y ago
  Yes, for a project I'm currently working on. It's targeted toward consumers in a small niche medical community. I Google'd until I found a handful of active forums for this niche. Then I posted to the most active one. I offered a free year's trial to the first beta users. I got 12 from that site. Then after a few days I repeated that process on another forum and got 8 more. I'm working out a lot of bugs but having real users is great. So far they've been active and enthusiastic with feedback. I'm not sure whether this is the right niche for my product, but am improving it a lot with their help. I haven't charged anyone yet(in fact, haven't even setup the payment system yet), and may run into difficulty when I do launch the public product since it seems consumers are very reluctant to pay for things online. But that's why it's great to have beta users from my target market who can help me get the product to a point where it's good enough to charge.
  - bkovitz 18y ago
    Wow, so you got your initial users by posting on-line! That's interesting. So far, I had been assuming that we would have to work through our networks of friends and/or make cold calls. Cold-calling is probably the hacker's worst nightmare, but I've been revving up: "I can learn to do ANYTHING!!"

cstejerean 18y ago

From the point of view of a customer/beta-tester: If your problem solves someone's need chances are they will find you. If posting a link on one or more sites frequented by your target audience doesn't generate a single beta tester you might want to re-evaluate what you're building. For example I was a beta tester for GitHub and converted to a paying customer after the beta period. Someone must have put an announcement here about the site and since it solved my need for git hosting I immediately signed up.

subwindow 18y ago

For me, I get beta testers for a site I'm working on through my blog. I never advertised it (other than a link in my "Projects" page), and admit up front that it isn't even beta-quality yet. Still, I get about 10 signups a month. Write a blog and publish the articles on social networking sites. You'll get beta signups naturally from that.