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Track Your Time – Without Notes or Timers
Yesterday we formally announced our affiliate / referral marketing program, designed to help our users refer Chrometa, and help us compensate you as a thank you.
Since we’ve been going through the exercise of setting up an affiliate program, I thought I’d share our lessons learned with those interested in possibly setting up a similar program for their own businesses.
Here’s the 5-step “how to” guide on how to setup an affiliate marketing program for your own business. Enjoy!
So you’re building a new app – and you’ve got it working decently enough. Maybe it’s not going to set the world on fire (just yet), but hey, it feels pretty good to have advanced beyond a buggy skeleton of a product that’s held together by chewing gum and duct tape!
You probably know you’ve got to get some real users on this thing in order to get some product validation and feedback, so that you can recalibrate and align your product dev efforts with real user needs. It’s time to go above and beyond your cool ideas that have carried you this far.
But how exactly do you go about getting these initial beta users? You know, the early adopters with the keen eyes who can walk you through a day in their lives, share their maddening “pain point” with you, and (of course) patiently deal with a few bugs?
We faced this hurdle in 2008, and I’ve got to admit, it was a big effort to recruit people who would actively and passionately use our app, give us unfiltered feedback, and yeah, put up with their fair share of product bugs too!
That first beta recruitment process is a tough one. Here’s how we did it, as I hope that our lessons learned are helpful to you if you’re going through this process the first time.
What Types of Beta Users Do You Need?
Last week, an early stage entrepreneur asked me if we recruited our friends and family to beta test our app. We did, but in general, unless you’ve got friends and/or family members who specifically fit the profile of your target customer, I’d recommend moving beyond this friendly audience as soon as you can.
While our friends and family members were very kind in walking through the setup process, honestly that’s about where the usefulness of their testing ended. Why? Because they were running our app as a favor – not because they needed it.
And there is a HUGE difference between folks who run your app as a favor, and folks who run it because they desperately need it. You need the latter!
When we connected with folks who really needed our app (in our case, professionals who need to keep very close track of their time, like lawyers), that’s when we started getting very valuable “on the ground” insights from real users.
But what if you can’t readily find anyone in your target market? Better keep looking – because you’ll need to find them eventually if your product is going to succeed anyway!
Two Ways to Recruit Initial Beta Users
To locate these “must have” users to beta test, you can:
How to Get People to Come to You
We had a pretty good website up before we had a pretty good product – which is probably the sequence you want to follow as well. At minimum, I’d recommend getting a simple one-page website (or better yet, blog) up as soon as you can.
The big benefit here is that people can now find you. You’re not going to see a ton of traffic, but you may be able to figure out a creative SEO angle to rank high for a long tail keyword or two.
With Google increasingly focused on delivering relevant search results to its users, I’ve noticed they are throwing more love to niche sites that more perfectly fit the users’ search term. And, the trend in search behavior is that people are typing in longer phrases, thanks to their ever-increasing faith in the almighty Google algorithm.
Going back to our case, we were fortunate enough to rank for phrases like “automatic time tracking software” fairly soon after getting our site up. While not many folks search on this (you’d never fill a sales pipeline with search volume from this alone), the people who do use this term very well know what they’re looking for! And we’re after quality over quantity anyway (more on that later).
When a prospective user found our site, and saw what our product did (or was supposed to do, at least!), some were interested enough to contact us about beta testing. So make sure you have an obvious contact form and/or contact info!
You could also sponsor search terms via Google AdWords. Common phrases can be quite expensive (especially in the B2B world) – but if you again think “long tail” search terms, you may be able to get a few relevant clicks for not that much dough.
In a perfect world, this step would provide you with more eager beta users than you’d ever dreamed of. But since this may not happen, let’s see what you’ll need to do if (and more likely, when) you need to press the issue and make something happen yourself.
How to Reach Out to Potential Beta Users
It’s time to roll up your sleeves and starting going outbound to potential beta users in your target market. Don’t worry, this doesn’t actually involve cold calling. Cold emailing, yes, but that’s no sweat.
Here’s the playbook I used (and still use, actually) to reach out to people about beta testing:
Dear Mike,
I’m a fellow PCU grad, working on a new software startup. I’d like to ask your advice, if I may, about a new product we’re developing to help attorneys with their timekeeping efforts.
I’d greatly appreciate the opportunity to pick your brain for a few minutes, and get your take on the problem we’re trying to solve. Any advice you have based on your experience and expertise in the legal profession would be most helpful.
Thanks in advance,
Brett Owens ENG ‘03 (School/Class Year)
When Mike graciously replies to our email, we’ll setup a few minutes to chat and ask him for his advice. People love giving advice, and they rarely turn down an opportunity to share wisdom – especially with regards to their area of expertise (which is exactly what we’re asking for, as a bright and eager entrepreneur!)
Brief aside – most people’s everyday lives are really not that exciting. Perhaps manageable, perhaps passively interesting – but there’s not much in the way of outright excitement. This is important, because being contacted by a fellow alumni working on a startup venture is actually pretty cool!
When you connect with Mike by phone, ask him for his insights about the problem you are trying to solve. In our case, this is where I’d ask if timekeeping was a pain for him.
Hey Mike – how do you reconcile your time at the end of the week? Would you mind walking me through a day/week in your work life here? Appreciate your take on this – especially anything that you believe could be done to improve the process.
Then we let Mike talk. And if it turns out this is a problem he struggles with – bingo!
OK thanks Mike, that’s very helpful. We’re actually working on a product that may help with the headaches you face every Friday evening when you try to track down how you spent your time during the past week. Would you be interested in taking it for a beta test spin when we have something ready?
More likely than not, Mike’s going to say yes. Which gives us a new star beta tester, and gives Mike hope for his weekly headache!
How Many Initial Beta Users Do You Really Need?
Not that many, really – focus on quality over quantity. You want a wide enough cross section of users who will give you a solid breadth of feedback – but not too many that you get overwhelmed.
In our initial stages, we had a very solid group of 5 beta users. They were great, and we were able to give each person individualized attention and support. As long as you’re getting regular, detailed feedback from your beta testers, a small number like 5 or 10 can be plenty.
If you can get a small number of people to love your app, you can get a large number of people crazy about it too. Take your time initially, get the product fit right, and you can then scale up your beta from there.
Best of luck in recruiting your initial group of lucky beta users!
Ed. note: We originally drafted this piece for SacStarts.com – Sacramento’s technology startup hub.
“Never confuse activity with achievement.” – John Wooden
Has it every been more challenging to get work done than it is today? It’s quite ironic that, as fortunate as we are to have all of the technological innovations we enjoy today, these “productivity boosters” can be too much of a good thing.
Sometime late last year, I found myself really looking forward to a free weekend where I had nothing planned – which would allow me to get “a lot of work done”. So starting Saturday morning, I plowed away at my “to do” list. Same thing on Sunday. I knocked off more things than I would have during a normal work week, and in only two days.
These weekend work sessions have become a real boon to my productivity. And many people I’ve discussed this with have shared my experience.
“Absolutely, I can’t get anything done during the week, there are just too many interruptions,” they’ll say.
But recently I got to thinking – wait, there’s something really wrong with this picture.
First off – I love what I do. I’m building my own company, I’ve gotten to choose everyone I work with – so absolutely no complaints. BUT – is it healthy to work for consecutive weeks on end, without breaking away.
I don’t think so. Hard work is great, and absolutely required for entrepreneurs. But often our best ideas will come when we least expect it – when our mind is free to relax and drift. This can’t happen if we work 24/7/365 – we just never get the opportunity.
So recently, I’ve started devising a system that would help optimize my personal/business productivity, AND bring a little more balance to my life.
I started by immersing myself in many of the time management and productivity methodologies out there – and there are no shortage of them.
I actually have traditionally avoided these, because, well, I fancied myself as being relatively productive.
So here’s an overview of a hybrid system I’ve developed. One thing I learned is that, as an entrepreneur, my playbook is always changing. So I need to develop a very flexible system – beyond just optimal efficiency. Sure, it’s great if I get a lot done, but if it’s not the right stuff, who really cares anyway.
The three principles I’ve been successfully incorporating:
1. Always be prioritizing – most things don’t actually matter.
Classic 80/20 rule – 20% of the things you do will provide 80% of the value. If you have 10 things on your “to do” list, the top 2 are much more valuable than the next 8 combined.
I’d encourage you to chew on this concept a bit – it’s simple, yet very powerful. I try to reprioritize my top items on a weekly basis (this is a better use of weekend work time). I’ve found that many of the “next 8” are no longer important anymore.
2. Don’t get too busy – fake it if you feel guilty.
Resist the urge to fill up your day with meetings, phone calls, and items that you need to get done. I constantly ask myself: “What’s the worst that will happen if I don’t have this meeting? If I don’t get this done?” If it’s not that bad, axe it.
Sure, it feels great to be busy, and to “get a lot done.” But I think as an entrepreneur, this is a trap.
If I look back at all the time I’ve invested in Chrometa since we founded it, most of the things I’ve done haven’t mattered at all in the long run. I’ll bet just 5% of my efforts have yielded 80% or more of our benefits.
Since I realized this, I’ve tried to sit back and think that if I only had one hour to work today, what would I do? That usually helps push a sales/marketing activity to the forefront. It’s never administrative work, that’s for sure.
And if you want to project a busy façade for the rest of the world to see? Go for it – nobody’s going to know you’re not really that busy. Heck, Ben Franklin used to run through the streets of Philadelphia carry reams of paper by hand back to his printing shop. It was all for show – because not only did Franklin value hard work, but he also valued the appearance of hard work.
3. If it has to be done, then just focus and do it.
The old weekend phenomena revisited. On weekends, with no incoming distractions, I can just focus in and knock something off. Weekdays it’s been a challenge – emails, instant messages, phone calls, clicking over to the web (what’s the DOW doing today?).
So here’s how I am trying to emulate the weekend experience, during the week:
In sum, I’ve found that the key to my personal productivity is exactly what small business and time management guru Brian Tracy has been preaching for years – focus on just one thing at a time, your most valuable activity, and don’t stop until it’s completed.
Further Reading: The First Rule of Productivity: One Thing at a Time
My good friend Adam Kalsey – Founder of many successful enterprises, including IMified (acquired last year by Voxeo) and SacStarts (Sacramento’s Startup Network) – dishes out some refreshing advice for new entrepreneurs over at the SacStarts blog:
I talk to a great many erstwhile entrepreneurs that tell me all about their ideas and all the things that they’re going to do when they start their company. Or people who have started but aren’t really getting anything done because they can’t find the right co-founder or they need to design every last detail first, or they don’t have the marketing copy for their web site quite right yet.
Entrepreneurs do. We take an idea and a market and drive to make it happen. Figure out what’s standing in the way of you getting stuff done and just go through it. Once you’re actually building your company, a lot of those things that looked insurmountable turn out to be no problem at all.
These are two paragraphs that any aspiring entrepreneur should read over and over again – this is the essence of why so many wannabe companies never get off the ground. And why so many wannabe entrepreneurs are forever waiting for the stars to align for them to go whole hog after their vision.
Here’s an unfortunate fact of life: The stars will never align. So if you’re waiting around for a few things to “fall into place”, you’re wasting time. Just get started and get after it.
As Adam mentions, most problems you’re planning for right now will never come to fruition. At least 95% of your planning time and energy is likely being wasted.
On the flip side, there are obstacles that you’ll never anticipate until you start off on your journey. That’s OK – you’ll deal with them as they come.
The important thing is to “fail fast” – if something is not working, stop doing it, and start doing more things that are working.
But – what if nothing is working at all? That’s OK too – actually it’s completely normal, especially for a startup. See, you don’t have to be that far off for it to feel like nothing is lining up.
If I may, let me use Chrometa as an example. One year ago at this time, we had very little working. Our messaging and value proposition was not connecting with the market – people would go to our website, and wonder what the heck we (and our product) did. Not good.
Our product itself was a little better. It had evolved to the stage where trial and beta users would say “I can see where this is going.”
So we kept tweaking everything – our focus, the product itself, our messaging, etc. It can be a maddening process, quite honestly, because you can make a lot of incremental improvements, and have nothing to show for it.
“How’s the startup going?” is a question people love to ask. And it’s a question a pre-revenue company usually hates to answer! Because it’s tough to say things are going well when you don’t yet have a product that people will gladly pay for.
But eventually, it came together for us. We defined who we were. We kept honing the product (and continue to do so). And eventually things started to click.
Moral of the story – inaction is the enemy of the entrepreneur. Get moving today. You’ll figure out what works, what doesn’t (that’ll be a real long list initially), and most importantly, you’ll be able to go from there and start building something of real value.
