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

Posted by somedude1234abc on Monday August 01, 2011 @03:51AM
from the ask-hn dept.

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?

( 4 comments | 4 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: How do you know whether or not customers will pay... by patio11 on Monday August 01, 2011 @04:01AM (#2831207)

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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Re:Ask HN: How do you know whether or not customers will pay... by blazzar on Monday August 01, 2011 @04:36AM (#2831280)

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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Re:Ask HN: How do you know whether or not customers will pay... by glimcat on Monday August 01, 2011 @04:07AM (#2831223)

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

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Re:Ask HN: How do you know whether or not customers will pay... by oceanician on Monday August 01, 2011 @06:00AM (#2831419)

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 :)

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