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Comment by freshlog | Hacker News Reader

A simple way to show that your app is going to be around for the long haul is to charge users money for it, the founder of Pinboard, a paid bookmarking web app says it best:

http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/

While conducting the beta test for my selective link sharing-via-email digests tool, Handpick:

http://handpick.me

I asked my users whether they'd pay to support the app to run for the long haul. They love my app enough to say yes and were delighted that they could actually actively fund the operations and development.

Go on, try asking your users if they'd pay for your product. It's the best validation you can get!

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> Go on, try asking your users if they'd pay for your product. It's the best validation you can get!

I'd be very careful with that. While I do partially agree with it, it's very easy to overvalue what your users tell you. Not only there's the danger that Steve Blank points out [1], that you might be making the mistake of listening to the wrong costumer segment (which is really hard to tell). But there's also the problem that, deep down, no one really knows what they want, much less how much you would pay for what you want. There's a huge discrepancy between "how much your costumer will tell you he'll pay", and "how much he'll pay". And telling the difference between those is also really hard to do.

So do ask your users. But take their opinion with a grain of salt and try other validation methods to complement it (A/B tests, analytics).

[1] http://steveblank.com/2012/02/27/killing-your-startup-by-lis...

In my experience, you have to worry much more about people saying they won't pay (when they actually would) than saying they will pay (when they actually wouldn't).

I can't tell you how many folks went from "gee, why on earth would I ever pay for that?" when we were building our apps to plunking down money after they saw all that we offered, & how much better our apps would really make their daily lives. Or after they heard about it from their friends.

Don't ask your close friends & family, unless they're total straight-talkers. They may say "yes" when they really wouldn't. But you can't just ask "Would you pay for x?" and take a "No" at face value, either.

That's where salesmanship comes in, and if you're bad at salesmanship, then you will never get a truthful result by asking.

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