Would you pay to get feedback on your prototype, MVP, landing page?
As an aspiring indie hacker with an agile mindset I'm fully committed to:
- shipping an MVP
- getting feedback
- improving/pivoting.
But sometimes, it feels like I'm hitting a wall at step 2.
I've tried reaching out to my potential users on subreddits, LinkedIn, and forums, crafting compelling posts and offering a sneak peek into my product. The response has been encouraging, with analytics showing that people are using it and my posts receiving a good number of likes and positive comments.
However, as much as I enjoy the dopamine shot every time I get a like or a "Cool product!" there's really not much I can do with that. I don't think I can remember one person who answered the single question that I typically ask in my post.
Are you in a similar situation? Struggling to get meaningful feedback from your target audience?
Would you pay to have some qualitative feedback from users in your target audience?
I wouldn't pay in the initial phases. The beginning is all about iteration, changes, exploration, etc. I'd pay for a more mature product
But as they mention above. I'll pay for ads to validate
btw, if you wanna give me some feedback I'm looking for it! rippedrich.com
Indeed! But you can't really iterate / change without feedback. Otherwise you're just guessing?
Your newsletter sounds fun. There's certainly a market for that.
I'd be more interested if there was a "fit-smart-wealthy-positive impact on the world" variant, but that might be too rare a creature to create enough content ;)
ty for the feedback!
Yes....paying qualified people to review it and give constructive feedback is a good thing. Shouldn't really cost too much. Even VCs and other investors often pay people for opinions on ideas or certain topics. So this is not something that is abnormal. Go for it!
I would be perfectly ok with paying. However, one of the best validation strategies is actually to start selling your product and see if you have any conversions.
Yes, if we want to validate quickly and it make sense for the product we pay for google/facebook ads to get it infront of relevant people.
Works like charm
You pay for ads and then what happens? I don't understand how you get the feedback?
Or maybe you're just looking at analytics, behavior, conversion etc and not gathering qualitative feedback?
We launch ads, if we get users, I reach out to them and try to get them on call. I do a lot of listening trying to learn about their problem, why they signed up and so on.
If the acquisition cost for some reason works out (this doesn’t happen very often) we double down on the ads.
If not, we learne about who sign up and start building organic channels. SEO, outreach, reddit commenting and so on.
The feedback you really need only comes from your actual customers, which you cannot get by paying - as they are supposed to pay you (or tell you why they don't). However feedback on copy, ux and so on could be bought to improve the product.
Fair enough. But what if your product is very early stage (say MVP or even just a prototype) and you don't have actual customers, but only potential customers?
Would you pay to get information from them that can help you improve your product (or realize it's a waste of time)? Notice I'm not saying necessarily "pay them" but just "pay".
Good point, that's something else of cause and there are probably people willing to pay for it, to give your new business a headstart.
For me it depends on the quality of the feedback. I'd pay for good feedback, but how do you ensure that before you see it?
That makes sense. And I feel the same. I'd like to be sure I'm going to get my money's worth before paying.
I suppose there are ways to limit the risk of poor feedback, like making sure your getting it from the right audience, using the right incentives, providing clear rules to the people giving feedback.
Alternatively (or on top of that) there could be some kind of mechanism to ensure you only pay for valuable feedback. It sounds tricky as it raises the question: who decides what's valuable?
Hey! Yes, I absolutely would pay, especially if the feedback is valuable and helps me to upgrade and improve my product.
Indeed, I was searching for a reliable way to get feedback on one project I recently built :)
Cool! What's your product? And what have you tried to get feedback so far?
Well... is not really a product, here is the link if you wanna check it out: https://pagebrary.com - I collected a little feedback from colleagues/friends and got some value out of it, that's why I think it's interesting!
Interesting! I'm NOT a big reader but when I do read I definitely save quotes that leave an impression somewhere (usually a note on my phone's Google Keep..).
I know kindle has a similar feature where the sentences you highlight in your books all fall into the same place and you can consult them later on.
One thing that I thought was a bit deceiving with your website is that it is in English but some of your picks are in Italian (your native language I suppose - Ciao vicino!). If you selected a quote I believe it is valuable and want to read it too but then I realize I cannot understand it so I'm sad...
Hey, thanks for the feedback! The idea is to have something similar to what kindle does... but for paper books :)
And yes, I do read eng/ita so sometimes there is this language mismatch, but in the long term, I'd like to have e a multi-lang site to address this!
Hope I'll find the time to nurture this little baby!