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Something that keeps coming up: People offering to donate and/or help with the software. How should I handle these emails?
I'd add a donate (or tipjoy!) button. Or a bounty page where people can buy their favorite feature request to the top of the list.
If people want to help, maybe you could release an API? Or open-source your software?
You have enthusiastic users and you think you're going to sneak up on an incumbent? (suggest reading: http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2008/06/the_spooky_econ.h... ) I'd add a donate (or tipjoy!) button. Or a bounty page where people can buy their favorite feature request to the top of the list. If people want to help, maybe you could release an API? Or open-source your software?
You have enthusiastic users and you think you're going to sneak up on an incumbent? (suggest reading: http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2008/06/the_spooky_econ.h... ) I'd add a donate (or tipjoy!) button. Or a bounty page where people can buy their favorite feature request to the top of the list. If people want to help, maybe you could release an API? Or open-source your software?
You have enthusiastic users and you think you're going to sneak up on an incumbent? (suggest reading: http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2008/06/the_spooky_econ.h... ) I'd add a donate (or tipjoy!) button. Or a bounty page where people can buy their favorite feature request to the top of the list. If people want to help, maybe you could release an API? Or open-source your software?
I back the api idea. If anything, this helps you seperate logic in the app which will probably allow growing a dev team more efficiently. More importantly, though, is if customers actually do extend your app via an API you be empowering creativity outside your vision while still in your control. Letting users change the scope of your site is about as close to mapping your site to their needs as you can reasonably get…
From what he's told me, axod has had a similar experience with users offering to help with mibbit, and he's managed to put some of these offers to good use. Care to say more axod?
1. Testing - people love finding bugs and telling you about them. You get some crazy fanatical users that can't wait to try your new release on 17 different browsers and email you with any issues.
2. Documentation - wiki. A great way to have people help each other, and to grow the project.
3. Helping other users - if it's applicable have a help chatroom where you hang out, in which new users can come. With Mibbit there's now a core group of users that hang out in the help channel helping new users.
4. Integration with other things - For mibbit, people have created joomla plugins, mediawiki extensions, and even submitted a bug report to firefox that Mibbit should be the default handler for irc://.
5. Adding to a feature wish list (I'd recommend using a wiki and seeing if someone is willing to maintain it and keep it tidy and organised). Although I know there is a good webapp for voting up/down feature requests (Forget the name though).
5. Obviously word of mouth/recommendation/blogging about it.
6. Internationalization - People seem all too willing to translate a UI into other languages.
For me personally at the moment, I'm not interested in people helping with the software for a variety of reasons, but the above ways people do help are excellent, as they all assist in growth - worth far more than them donating some $.
Of course I'm sure once things get larger the dynamics change, but for an early stage I'd recommend those sorts of things.
From what he's told me, axod has had a similar experience with users offering to help with mibbit, and he's managed to put some of these offers to good use. Care to say more axod?
For Mibbit there's been a few ways people have helped: 1. Testing - people love finding bugs and telling you about them. You get some crazy fanatical users that can't wait to try your new release on 17 different browsers and email you with any issues. 2. Documentation - wiki. A great way to have people help each other, and to grow the project. 3. Helping other users - if it's applicable have a help chatroom where you…