A lot of people stand up a variation of “If you build it, he will come” (from Field of Dreams) as a copy-writing hook for whatever they are about to tell you about creating products/services/whatever.  We’re no better.  We’re…

The idea is to make sure you can sell your first version of the product at a very low price – if you cannot do this, then there is a good chance you don’t have enough number of people who will buy your product at your final price.

You are not selling them the Beta product, but the final shipping version of the first release. To get the lower price, the customer has to agree to give you enough feedback on the Beta product.

Of course, one needs to have clauses in there as to how long the beta period will last or what happens if you decide to kill the product etc. Otherwise, no customer in the right mind is going to buy anything.

Gopal

I would think that Sridhar’s question raises a valid point. How can you charge someone for a beta product, since it is likely buggy and far from a polished product. If you offer a refund to customers should the product ultimately not make it to market or the beta process be too frustrating, then it may be more reasonable to charge customers in this scenario.

Would love to hear some more models on converting ‘Like’ to ‘Buy’