Ask HN: How to find users for my beta app?

8 points by ishener 9 years ago | 10 comments

I have side project that I really enjoyed doing plus I think it's a really nice tool to have. I use it in my day job. The thing is I have no idea how to find users to register and start use it. There is a free plan, so I really don't think it should be so hard...

The app is http://discrete.li/ it's basically analytics service for ajax requests. Website owners plant a small javascript snippet in their site, and I track all statistics, including latency tracking and payload logs.

The service is pretty simple right now, but it is reliable. I use it for 6 months to track a medium-size app in production. I don't expect people to pay right away. I'll give it for free in exchange for feedback + patience while I implement it :-)

any way, I would love to hear your thoughts....

csallen 9 years ago |

There are lots of examples on my site IndieHackers.com of people building up a side project from nothing. In general, they seem to do two things in the beginning.

First, they spend lots of time talking to everyone they can: friends, family, coworkers, people in their online communities, people at conferences, etc. This is not scalable in the long-run, but very helpful in the beginning to kick things off. Paul Graham has written about this extensively: http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

Second, the more successful founders find good distribution channels. They find app stores, online marketplaces, partnerships, etc that constantly put their product in front of lots potential customers. Easier said than done, of course, but the first step is just being aware of that approach.

tedmiston 9 years ago | |

There's an entire book written about the second approach called Traction [0] which boils down to: find the most dominant distribution channels and exploit them. Of course it includes plenty of non-traditional channel ideas and strategies as well.

[0]: http://tractionbook.com/

twa927 9 years ago |

My reflections as a potential beta-user:

- the price is very high - the $89 plan will be sufficient for a small website only!

- why only javascript analytics when I also have server requests?

- the dashboard looks nice

- the website could contain more information - seems too plain for a paid product - a documentation link, company data

Overall, even if the price was lower I don't think I would use the product. It looks like it gives some functionality of more focused tools (like Sentry for error notification) but doesn't look sufficiently advanced.

To do what your product does I use Sentry (error notification) plus parsing of Nginx logs + metrics in a database for timing data.

I hope my remarks are helpful!

twa927 9 years ago | |

I got error when clicking on "save and get new tracking code".

BTW, the tracking code sends a request to your server for each ajax request? That looks like a big cost to end user (duplicated number of HTTP requests a browser makes).

tedmiston 9 years ago |

I think the best way to start user acquisition is to find other people that have the problem you have / had, and ask them to try it unrestricted. I would remove any notion of plans and pricing at this point until you've validated that it works for quite a few other people.

Zekio 9 years ago |

Nice, having logins while not using Https.

EDIT: Failed at english.

ishener 9 years ago | |

you're basically right. since it's a side project, i haven't invested in a certificate yet...

you can use this link though: https://latenlog.appspot.com/

csallen 9 years ago | | |

I don't want to pile on, but think there's a higher level lesson here, which is that it's important to know your audience. It sounds like you made a conscious decision to forgo TLS, however it's very predictable that that would go over poorly in a place like HN, so I assume you either weren't considering that or weren't aware of that. Try to always think about your audience!

shivakaush 9 years ago | | |

https://letsencrypt.org/

tedmiston 9 years ago | | |

You can get a free cert from StartSSL.