

Ask HN: How do you know whether or not customers will pay for your product? - somedude1234abc

Hello, I have some ideas for an app, but I'm not sure if people will pay for it.  How can you figure that out?
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patio11
Are they already paying for something which solves the same problem? If not,
it probably isn't a problem.

"Something" doesn't have to be software. It could be "a manual process which
consumes staff time", "a real product which could be made unnecessary by
software", etc.

(Many car manufacturers solve computer problems with warehouses full of very
expensive bits of steel shaped in particular ways. This is so demonstrably
suboptimal that the company which licked those computer problems -- using a
variety of systems which owed more to algorithms and paper cards as a
transport mechanism -- basically took over the world.)

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blazzar
A way I have used is to create a descriptive landing page with email capture,
create google ads and/or post in relevant forums to direct to page and see how
many signups you get. That should give you an idea of the rough conversion
rate.

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glimcat
Experience. Also, trying to sell it to them and seeing if people pay for your
product.

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oceanician
People pay for allsorts of rubbish. Why wouldn't they pay _something_ for your
product?

It's what level would they pay ... start higher than you think, and offer
discounts til people bite :)

