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I definitely agree with pitching to everyone. Start by pitching your idea to your (hopefully for this purpose) non-technical wife/gf/partner and changing your

by wmboy 16y ago

I definitely agree with pitching to everyone. Start by pitching your idea to your (hopefully for this purpose) non-technical wife/gf/partner and changing your pitch (and perhaps your idea) until he/she understands it straight away. Never thought of the Mechanical Turk idea before... sounds like it's worth a try.

DerekH 16y ago
I've never looked into Mechanical Turk either. Sounds like something that could be helpful. I wonder what a good budget would be for using it successfully.
- dstorrs 16y ago
  I've done this. I set up a survey on SurveyMonkey and then created a series of tasks on MT to send people to it. I paid about USD$0.05 per survey and spent something like $30 or $40 (I don't recall exactly). I got thousands of people taking the survey, they were from all over the world, all different demographics, and the information was solid -- i.e., people didn't just type "jfalksdfjkjhgkj" to try to steal the money. One thing to be aware of: since this will be an international audience, their English reading skills will be at various levels. Make sure your directions / questions are very clear and simple.
  - mayava 16y ago
    I highly recommend that for your first set of questions you either use filter surveys (ask for age, location, gender, etc) to target people who are in your target user demographic, or have test questions to make sure they really understood your pitch (ex: Summarize this product in 30 words or less). In my studies, I limited the respondents to the US, because I was getting too much noise from international workers. I also gave them the option of leaving more detailed feedback. Most of them did, to my surprise.
    - wmboy 16y ago
      What did you find was the best way to get quality traffic to the survey page?
- mayava 16y ago
  You can get decent data for about $50, but it may take you a few batches to get your questioning and worker filters on just right. I recommend starting with small batches of 20 or less responses, just to test quality (international vs. US only, specific panels, etc)
jakkinabox 16y ago
I pitched my idea to my gf and she said it was dumb :( I started working on it anyway (heh) and since I have seen funding given to a similar idea on a TV program and have seen a similar idea get a lot of attention on HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2349587 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2349587). So I would recommend trying more than one person anyway and don't let it get you down if the few people you try don't give you a good response.

by wmboy 16y ago

DerekH 16y ago

I've never looked into Mechanical Turk either. Sounds like something that could be helpful. I wonder what a good budget would be for using it successfully.

dstorrs 16y ago
I've done this. I set up a survey on SurveyMonkey and then created a series of tasks on MT to send people to it. I paid about USD$0.05 per survey and spent something like $30 or $40 (I don't recall exactly). I got thousands of people taking the survey, they were from all over the world, all different demographics, and the information was solid -- i.e., people didn't just type "jfalksdfjkjhgkj" to try to steal the money. One thing to be aware of: since this will be an international audience, their English reading skills will be at various levels. Make sure your directions / questions are very clear and simple.
- mayava 16y ago
  I highly recommend that for your first set of questions you either use filter surveys (ask for age, location, gender, etc) to target people who are in your target user demographic, or have test questions to make sure they really understood your pitch (ex: Summarize this product in 30 words or less). In my studies, I limited the respondents to the US, because I was getting too much noise from international workers. I also gave them the option of leaving more detailed feedback. Most of them did, to my surprise.
  - wmboy 16y ago
    What did you find was the best way to get quality traffic to the survey page?
mayava 16y ago
You can get decent data for about $50, but it may take you a few batches to get your questioning and worker filters on just right. I recommend starting with small batches of 20 or less responses, just to test quality (international vs. US only, specific panels, etc)

jakkinabox 16y ago

I pitched my idea to my gf and she said it was dumb :( I started working on it anyway (heh) and since I have seen funding given to a similar idea on a TV program and have seen a similar idea get a lot of attention on HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2349587 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2349587). So I would recommend trying more than one person anyway and don't let it get you down if the few people you try don't give you a good response.