Should you make beta user pay?
What are your opinion and personal experiences on this? I will soon launch a beta version of a product, and found some potential beta users. But I was wondering if I should make them pay yet or later when the product is officially live?
My first intention was to make it free for them for the moment, and offer them a great lifetime discount when the product is live. What do you think?
Don't launch as a beta, just launch. And charge people. The worst thing you can do is start using "free" users to shape your product when in all likelihood a large % will never pay you for the service and might have different needs to real users.
Ok thanks I'll take your advice!
IMHO, if it solves their problem, charge them. You need to be able to validate not only your product, but your business model. The only way you do that is by charging.
Maybe there's something I should ask first: why are you referencing it as a "beta" instead of your first release?
Ok thanks I see, I'll do this!
Yes, sorry, I think "beta users" is not the adequate phrasing for what I had in mind. Early user would be better.
What I wanted to do is have 2 or 3 "early users" to use my product and tell me what are their preferences on certain things, so I could implement it before doing a "real live version".