Beta testing a new product

Question

As a Micro ISV I am coming to the stage in the development of a new desktop software application where beta testing it with an external group of users would be great.

I would prefer private invite only beta testing as opposed to public free for all beta testing.

Are there websites/organisations, both free or paid, where I can 'reach out' to people (with some degree of selectivity) who want to test software and provide feedback/bug reports and so on?

What have other people done when beta testing their products?

UPDATE: I came across TryBeta which looks interesting (Although activity on the website seems to have ended around 2007).

With regard to turning testers into customers, I am not too concerned with doing this at the moment. Advertising towards the target audience to build up a customer base will be put in place at a later stage. Right now just testers, ideally managed by a third party website/organisation, would be ideal.

Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Usually, invite-only beta testing pretty much restricts you to existing or potential customers. If you have customers of this product (you don't because you say it's "new") or of other products from your company, invite them to test your product. They won't all say yes.

If you don't have customers, or you don't get enough beta testers, it's time for your sales critters (which sounds like it may be you) to get into action in creating some customers. Offering a beta, at no cost and no obligation, can often be an enticement to people that will actually encourage them to buy, especially if their bug reports are taken seriously. So this morphs your question into "how do I find potential customers for my app?" And that will depend on what your app is.

Answer 2

You might take the approach that GMail used during its initial launch -- for products with neworking effecs, an initial-seed rollout, followed by an referall-invite-based growth would allow you to scale up at your preferred growth rate. And, the test pool would have a greater likelihood of interactions.

How to form that initial seed? One possibility is to go to a magazine (online or print) for the target demographics and "rent the mailing list".