Re:Ninite: How we got 18,000 beta users in 4 weeks
by tibbon on Monday October 26, 2009 @02:18PM
(#903779)
I'm currently working on this problem right now with my company imVOX (http://imvox.com/trial.php). We're trying to finish up our client and slowly pull out of the real 'testing' phase of beta and more into an RC status and have load tests, etc.
Yet getting good beta testers is hard. Many people sign up, use it once, hit a bug and then never return. Understandable, but even emailing people (personally) hasn't been all that effective in getting people back consistently. I probably have 10 people that I can keep going to and know that they will use it again and again and provide feedback.
I've yet to go on a strong blog push yet, but thats probably my next approach.
Other methods to find bloggers: YouTube and Twitter Search. I've also been looking through friend's shared stuff on Google Reader occasionally to mark off ones to contact.
One twist that I have as problematic is that I don't have and 'special codes' to hand out to people currently. We had a system setup like that a while ago, but I think it was slowing downloads a bit so now its just a download link and you register for a (free) account in-client.
In addition for ideas of how to get more testers via blogging (commenting is important I know too), anyone trying it out would be really appreciated. I'm going to have them push the newest build to our download and auto-update servers later today.
Yet getting good beta testers is hard. Many people sign up, use it once, hit a bug and then never return. Understandable, but even emailing people (personally) hasn't been all that effective in getting people back consistently. I probably have 10 people that I can keep going to and know that they will use it again and again and provide feedback.
I've yet to go on a strong blog push yet, but thats probably my next approach.
Other methods to find bloggers: YouTube and Twitter Search. I've also been looking through friend's shared stuff on Google Reader occasionally to mark off ones to contact.
One twist that I have as problematic is that I don't have and 'special codes' to hand out to people currently. We had a system setup like that a while ago, but I think it was slowing downloads a bit so now its just a download link and you register for a (free) account in-client.
In addition for ideas of how to get more testers via blogging (commenting is important I know too), anyone trying it out would be really appreciated. I'm going to have them push the newest build to our download and auto-update servers later today.