Where do you get early beta testers for your product?
Ankit Sharma
58 replies
Replies
flo merian@fmerian
Great topic!
@clementrog started a related discussion a few months ago with the following insights:
- Invest in content and distribution with a viewpoint
- Launch awareness campaigns on social (product tours, screenshots, call for beta testers)
- Reach out to a selected list of top ideal companies to ask for feedback
- Reach out to industry influencers to get visibility on podcasts, blog posts, etc.
At Specify, we're working on an upcoming product and recently explored opportunities with Polywork. We had great results: 30+ early beta testers in a few hours 👍
Hope it helps!
Share
@clementrog @fmerian awesome thanks for your input, it really helps. Polywork is really awesome place for it.
Polywork is great for this!
@malenaohl Interesting! Did you partner with other brands or professionals? Thanks!
Loopin
Surprised this discussion is happening on ProductHunt, and yet, no one has used PH to find their initial beta users 🧐
Building Betalaunchpad.com for that. Excepting it to go live in a month.
Product Hunt
I'm actually curious about this also! I've mainly just used existing twitter audience but would love to hear what others have used to make a truly self sufficient beta hype machine similar to Clubhouse, Arc etc 😅
@aaronoleary yes I have seen some stories about Twitter, Indiehackers and subreddits for beta users.
Photosweep
For me it's always been a case of locking down and DM'ing key targets from Instagram and Twitter. You will end up in the "Requests" folders mostly but people do check and if they see they normally respond!
Keep the messages, personal but to the point.
Aim for 50 people.
"Hey Jude! Loved the work you did / content you created here!
We've worked super hard on a new app and really think you would find it useful!
Your thoughts however big or small would mean the world to us!"
Something like this usually works well! (Really do try and customise every message though as tempting as it is to copy paste)
Be incredibly grateful if they follow through of course and always ask if there's anything you can do for them.
Offering entry into a basic competition to win Amazon vouchers has also helped.
Put some good tunes on for a few hours and get Dming!
Good luck!
Photosweep
For wonderful interested people, have a Google form ready and always ask if they could share to anyone they know that might be interested.
Every person is a new door!
And major discount for life on the product. These people are enormously valuable in the early stages.
Cold emails and messages don't work. One cold or "one-day promo" massage can lead to a ban/spam forever.
Consider "how to give first" rather than "where and how to promote." Every contribution can become a collaboration.
WhiteLabel
A giveaway on SaaSWarrior group! :)
Dewey Beta
one of the hardest problems that I have yet to solve. great question!
NEWOLDSTAMP
Facebook groups. AND PH - I think that Product Hunt is the best platform to search for beta testers. With its Ship (https://www.producthunt.com/ship) it shouts out loud "Come and validate your product" or "Come and find the very first users for your product!"
There are loads of good Discord groups, reddits threads, Slack channels and even Rock groups where you can connect with builders, would definitely recommend looking into more resources in that front!
@nicolaas_spijker great suggestions. How did you build that discord group list? would love to learn more!
@jaidayang I have used https://disboard.org in the past, communities range in quality but once you join a few good ones it opens up a pathway to finding the most active/valuable ones .
My suggestion to finding the high value communities once you join one of these groups: open a 1:1 with the most active users of the new communities and ask them for their thoughts on communities in your niche, very often they can extend an invite as well.
Besides that I have a few other routes I have taken to find communities on Discord and other places, feel free to connect with me through the links on my profile :).
AppSumo is a great place for first users as they have a pretty responsive community as addition you can even get some profit from launch
I got my initial 30 users from cold emails targeted to the potential ICP.
Making it personalised and only talking about the problem & not the product
@varunvarma91 hmmm....but sometimes cold mailing is dangerous and why would people trust a new email or a person?
@ankitsharmaofficial Valid question here! It does make a difference on the email body. Making sure that the email is not salesy, personalization so that the reader knows that the sender has spent time on researching about them, and being vulnerable & honest about yourself. I guess these things have worked for me.
Relevant communities in reddit and quora
WorkHub
You can try free platforms like Reddit, Quora, and Hacker News to find beta testers for your product. Some paid options are also available if you can spend some bucks.
That's a great question. As a person who had to go through the process of finding early beta testers for his project, I can say that it's not easy. I've used Twitter and Quora in the past, as well as Reddit. If you can get people interested in your product before they have to become beta testers, they are more likely to agree with you.
AppstoreSpy
My task now is to find beta-testers and Polywork really helps me!
There's a search in collaborations and u can find professionals open for beta-testing. And to text them all. We got about 30 good feedbacks from Polywork. Also you can create a post and describe your oportunity.
https://www.polywork.com/
dotBRAND
@ankitsharmaofficial Because my target audience are laser-focused on graphic designers, so it's relatively easy for me to get my early beta testers.