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As a solo developer of a small app its hard to find 20 unique testers who are willing to test it for 14 days. its going to cost me several times more than the c

As a solo developer of a small app its hard to find 20 unique testers who are willing to test it for 14 days. its going to cost me several times more than the cost of developing the app. just doesn’t make sense.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago
The tech world has this absurd imagination that Rome is built in a day, that if we build it right they will come. Success has to be instant & exponential or it's not worthwhile. I could not be more disgusted by this change. This attitude rules so much of what happens now. Web specs are like, oh, only 0.1% of websites use this feature after 2 years: we can ignore it. That's a huge number, and the timeframe, the expectation that either tech is adopted & loved within months or its not worthwhile is horrendous, so greatly demeans human effort & the nature of how meaning builds. We have to get back to expecting sometimes the larger changes being slow & tectonic.
onion2k 2y ago
If you can't find 20 people who want to use your app for free in exchange for some testing you haven't got much hope of selling enough copies of it to make it worthwhile building in the first place.
- redserk 2y ago
  If it's a niche enough app, the payment is likely more of a tip jar instead of a full-blown business venture. I pay for a few very niche calculator apps that I wouldn't even be able to find 20 people interested without putting in some effort and asking for friends to ask their friends.
  - onion2k 2y ago
    It's hard to justify why Google should support Play store apps that appeal to less than 20 people. That sounds like something where side-loading is a very useful alternative to an app store.
    - robofanatic 2y ago
      They could bump up their membership fee from $25 to $100 like Apple App Store.
    - Arnt 2y ago
      Appeal to fewer than 20 people is one thing, making 20 people install a beta version is quite another. There's a saying, only one of 10k people affected by a bug will report it. Getting early testers is a bit like that, although not as bad as 1/10k.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - robofanatic 2y ago
    Totally agree. Even I have a niche app for a specific group. Its tremendously hard for me to find 20 testers. And to be honest the app is pretty simple and doesn’t even require that many testers.
- sunaookami 2y ago
  Not everyone wants to make money with their apps and not everyone is building apps purely for profit.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

The tech world has this absurd imagination that Rome is built in a day, that if we build it right they will come. Success has to be instant & exponential or it's not worthwhile. I could not be more disgusted by this change. This attitude rules so much of what happens now. Web specs are like, oh, only 0.1% of websites use this feature after 2 years: we can ignore it. That's a huge number, and the timeframe, the expectation that either tech is adopted & loved within months or its not worthwhile is horrendous, so greatly demeans human effort & the nature of how meaning builds. We have to get back to expecting sometimes the larger changes being slow & tectonic.

onion2k 2y ago

If you can't find 20 people who want to use your app for free in exchange for some testing you haven't got much hope of selling enough copies of it to make it worthwhile building in the first place.

redserk 2y ago
If it's a niche enough app, the payment is likely more of a tip jar instead of a full-blown business venture. I pay for a few very niche calculator apps that I wouldn't even be able to find 20 people interested without putting in some effort and asking for friends to ask their friends.
- onion2k 2y ago
  It's hard to justify why Google should support Play store apps that appeal to less than 20 people. That sounds like something where side-loading is a very useful alternative to an app store.
  - robofanatic 2y ago
    They could bump up their membership fee from $25 to $100 like Apple App Store.
  - Arnt 2y ago
    Appeal to fewer than 20 people is one thing, making 20 people install a beta version is quite another. There's a saying, only one of 10k people affected by a bug will report it. Getting early testers is a bit like that, although not as bad as 1/10k.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- robofanatic 2y ago
  Totally agree. Even I have a niche app for a specific group. Its tremendously hard for me to find 20 testers. And to be honest the app is pretty simple and doesn’t even require that many testers.
sunaookami 2y ago
Not everyone wants to make money with their apps and not everyone is building apps purely for profit.