Ninite: How we got 18,000 beta users in 4 weeks

I'm currently working on this problem right now with my company imVOX (<a href="http://imvox.com/trial.php" rel="nofollow">http://imvox.com/trial.php</a>). We're trying to finish up our client and slowly pull out of the real 'testing' phase of beta and more into an RC status and have load tests, etc.<p>Yet getting good beta testers is hard. Many people sign up, use it once, hit a bug and then never return. Understandable, but even emailing people (personally) hasn't been all that effective in getting people back consistently. I probably have 10 people that I can keep going to and know that they will use it again and again and provide feedback.<p>I've yet to go on a strong blog push yet, but thats probably my next approach.<p>Other methods to find bloggers: YouTube and Twitter Search. I've also been looking through friend's shared stuff on Google Reader occasionally to mark off ones to contact.<p>One twist that I have as problematic is that I don't have and 'special codes' to hand out to people currently. We had a system setup like that a while ago, but I think it was slowing downloads a bit so now its just a download link and you register for a (free) account in-client.<p>In addition for ideas of how to get more testers via blogging (commenting is important I know too), anyone trying it out would be really appreciated. I'm going to have them push the newest build to our download and auto-update servers later today.

The target market seems to be tech-savvy. Getting on blogs (with a relevant audience) is much more challenging for b2b and most consumer apps.

Can you give more details on how many blogs you've contacted? How many covered you? How did you phrase your email to make it interesting to the bloggers?<p>Edit: Also, how you computed readership numbers for a blog?

Pardon the expression, but people are complete suckers for sort of thing.<p>Given two similar services, one with a limit on registration and one without, you can bet that the one with the limit will garner some sort of popularity just by virtue of being "exclusive."<p>This doesn't mean it's a bad marketing tactic. On the contrary, it's obviously excellent for exposure... but if it ever becomes a popular service, saying "I was there first" is a huge deal for people. For reference: Lines outside movie theaters days in advance for the Star Wars movies, video game midnight release parties, and 8 hour lines outside Apple stores for a phone.

I think it's important to note that immediate media coverage and an immediate surge in signups is not always desirable for something just released and it's of course not always a prerequisite for success in the long run.<p>It's your trending over time that really counts.

I'd just like to say that you guys couldn't have launched in a more perfect time. I browsed your site when I saw it linked to on HN and didn't think much of it. My mom came home the following day with a new laptop and asked me to install a bunch of software. I quickly remembered Ninite and had most of her stuff installed in no time. It was really great.

I just have to say I would use your service...<p>Definitely going to use this strategy in the future, but hope the reach of this post doesn't flood blogger's inboxes with similar schemes.

The approach makes sense, but something about spamming tons of blog owners turns me off.<p>I've used a similar approach, but only with the blogs that I had either made personal contact with previously or that I frequented.<p>On another note, your blogroll/Reader subscriptions are a great place to start if you follow other bloggers in your industry. Being an active member of the blogosphere also helps give you some clout.

Would you mind pasting the link of one of the blogs? I am interested to see how they are framing the promotion.

good to see someone moving on this idea. I talked with a few people about this exact service a year ago and the general consensus was that if it got big you'd get slammed for violating EULA's. best of luck.

Getting featured on Lifehacker.com didn't hurt, I suppose..

Congrats! That's great. Thanks for sharing your success!