

Ask HN: 100 people on my beta list? - mtrn

Hi, this is my first 'Ask HN' post; please educate me if necessary.<p>I wrote down a bullet-point list of features for a desktop app I wanted to implement and published it.<p>During the last months I got around 100 people leaving their email-address, basically saying, yes, I'd be interested in this product - let me know when it's ready.<p>Now 100 is almost nothing, since the price could only be in the $20-50 range, and I'm not really motivated to provide support, once people would really pay. It is just not my dream product, although I can see, how it could help people with their workflow.<p>How would you handle such a situation?
======
zipdog
If you're not motivated to provide suuport and it's not your dream project,
I'd treat the opportunity more like a contract position: you're likely to be
paid around $2k for doing a certain amount of work. If that's worth it for
your time, then go ahead.

If you're concerned about support taking time, then think of time spent on
support as time invested in getting more customers (since you're either
improving a relationship that might lead to recommendations or improving your
product).

------
sagacity
One possible course of action:

email these 100 people explaining to them that while you have a good number of
'intent to buy', you can't launch the app in absence of more buyer interest.
Next, ask/request their help in terms of getting more signups.

(As per Richard Bach's Cosmic Law,) Like poles attract i.e. people are likely
to know others having common interest. If your app is useful enough,
(hopefully it is,) the current 100 will help you get more leads.

HTH

~~~
Zakuzaa

       you can't launch the app in absence of more buyer interest
    

If somebody mails that to me, I myself would lose interest in the product. And
I don't think that's just me.

------
arielcamus
What about charging monthly? If you could set a lower value than 20-50$ per
month and your client life-time is something higher than 6-8 months, you can
create something more interesting.

~~~
mtrn
It's - as I think of it now - genuinely a desktop app and therefore somewhat
difficult to set monthly price tags.

~~~
arielcamus
Spotify is an example, but you can find many others like Evernote, Steam or
WoW. It depends on your users willing to pay on a monthly basis. But you are
the one that best know your product, if you say it'd difficult, it must be
true :)

------
bmelton
What exactly is the situation? You've got 100 people interested in buying your
product based on a landing page.

I take it you were expecting more? How much more? You've got 100ish leads on
your project for sales that should be easyish to sell to (at least compared to
random people). You won't get it, but if you get all of them at the bottom
price, that's $2k a month.

By all accounts, I can only see this as a good thing, especially if your
landing page indicates that there's cost involved. If the landing page gives
any indication that the service might be free, it's easier to discount some of
those leads, but if you're advertising a for-pay service and got 100 hits, I
think you're looking pretty good, from my perspective.

~~~
mtrn
I wasn't expecting anything. I started it, because I had the idea, I saw one
dominant competing product which sucked and I just wanted to get a feel for
the market.

Yes, these leads may be precious. But it's just a desktop app, just a one-time
payment.

(P.S. If it were a webish app with $20/month price tag and 100 people ready to
give it a try, I would be really busy implementing the stuff right now ;)

~~~
sagacity
> But it's just a desktop app, just a one-time payment.

In which case, consider building a feature or time limited freeware version
initially, without support, offering users to buy/upgrade, and submit it to
all the shareware/freeware joints out there. That should get you a decent
number of potential buyers, a good percentage of which should convert.

Test the waters this way and if you still don't get enough numbers, ditch the
idea of full commercial version.

HTH

------
maguay
What's the app? What platform are you targeting?

