Where do you find beta testers?
Hi,
We've started building getsponsy.com the last couple weeks to scratch my own itch and we are now getting close to have a MVP ready and we are looking for beta testers, but it is hard to find them.
The MVP at this stage aims to help newsletter creators to show and manage sponsors, but we'll like to know where this can lead and what creators are struggling with and where we can best help them.
I tried posting on the Newsletter Crew group but I had received very little to no engagement so far. And today I tried to reach cold email to newsletter creators I already follow, but still waiting on replies.
We could post the tool on PH or something and get some feedback from there, but would love to get pre-feedback from real users beforehand.
Where do you guys look for beta testers?
And do you have or know anyone with a newsletter that could be interested?
Thanks in advance for the help!
Contact newsletter owners listed on Upstart.me and other newsletter directories
For our product vidds.co I initially reached out to relevant people within my network on LinkedIn or by directly emailing them. This got us a small cohort of 25ish users for our closed beta. Personal networks are a good place to start, but you can probably bulster out the users by posting accross different subreddits e.g. r/AlphaandBetausers or r/SideProject. Unfortunately don't have a newsletter otherwise would gladly join the beta. Best of luck!
Thanks, I will try those subreddits. I'm avoiding LinkedIn, I'd rather keep it on the down low for now :)
You shouldn’t, talk to https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinwelsh maybe he can tell you where to find those communities. He is a creator/blogger himself and sells infoproducts.
Try subreddits that are related to your niche or a general sub like https://www.reddit.com/r/alphaandbetausers/.
Try to look for communities of people that are in your target audience. That's what we are doing at Adflow and we are getting really valuable user feedback.
+1 on this. that's the best way to do it! i've shared the process i've used for my own project:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-to-start-a-new-community-from-scratch-8dad7e0096
and monica lent's strategy:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/step-by-step-on-building-community-for-your-product-via-monica-lent-b7f43cafb2
Thanks @lorenzosignoretti, but where to find such communities? I agree that once you find those places, feedback can be very valuable as both parties can benefit from each other.
@sircon, I just wrote an article about where we found our first 100 beta customers here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-got-our-first-100-beta-customers-with-0-994cc00352
tl;dr micro communities just like @lorenzosignoretti suggested
In your case I would look for people with paid communities dedicated to newsletters where people are trying to monetize. Courses or forums where people are working on newsletters. Search Twitter for people with newsletters and maybe reach out directly. That kind of thing should yield some results.