BetaList vs. BetaPage - A Post Mortem

In the last month, SiteSentry has been featured on both BetaList and BetaPage so I thought it might be worth talking about the experience and results.

In both cases I went with their free option, which means it goes in to a queue and you don't know when it will be published. You can pay to jump the queue, but with no idea what kind of traffic they might generate, I wasn't ready to do that.

I submitted SiteSentry to both sites on 23rd March.
BetaPage published it first, featuring on 11th May, whilst it didn't appear on BetaList until 3rd June, so BetaPage wins this round, publishing 3 weeks earlier.

Other indiehackers who've posted about this saw wait-times of around a month, so it looks like their queues are significantly longer now.

Getting to what really matters - traffic - the results were starkly different. BetaPage resulted in just 8 visitors in total, and no sign-ups. BetaList, on the other hand, has delivered 100 visitors (so far, it's only three days since it was featured) and 10 sign-ups.

Despite having to wait a bit longer to be featured, BetaList was a clear winner for me. Would I pay to jump the queue next time? I might. Not because I think that will generate more traffic, but because knowing in advance what day it will be published would enable me to build other marketing efforts around it.

I'm not complaining though - 10 sign-ups is a good result. Now to see if any turn in to paying customers!