Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your site, but when I looked at it yesterday, you're looking for people to download and execute iPhone apps, and get paid a small sum for doing so, correct?
If that's the case, who is your target audience? It sure wasn't me, because my time is more valuable than that-- you'd have to raise your rates by several orders of magnitude before I'd be interested. Which is also why I don't spend my time on the Mechanical Turk.
But, it seems to me that the people who do so are the kind of people you might be interested in. So, if that's the case, why not spend some money there on testing/market research?
In other words, pay people (via MTurk) to test out your service (which will involve them also getting paid). In exchange for the "extra" MTurk money, you can ask them a few questions about how well the service worked, and where they think it should be advertised.
And, if it works well, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them become repeat users, even outside of MTurk.
You're understanding of the site is correct, at least from the user perspective (non app developer).
How far would the rates need to be raised for you to be interested? The reasoning behind my current price structure is that I often find myself aimlessly wandering the app store and eventually download a few free apps and usually get suckered into a paid app. My site (assuming it grows) would provide a way to aimlessly get exposure to apps and either get paid a small sum for trying out a free app, or get a paid app for free.
All in all though I think your idea of MTurk has merits and will certainly be checking into this option.
hahaha certainly seems a little ridiculous put this way :)
In all seriousness though .20 cents an hour is quite low. While free apps certainly don't pay out much getting a paid app for essentially nothing is a sweet deal (at least in my mind perhaps I'm wrong).
Developers putting their apps onto users devices and users (who might not normally download apps) trying out new and exciting technologies while making a little spare change doesn't seem to hurt anyone, in fact I'm banking on the fact that people will find value in the service.
My advice: Don't even mention the $.10 minimum. Your sell is only possibly "try paid apps for free." Paying nothing is better than paying out $.10 - it cheapens your service.
And this would be so much better if you could avoid cash transactions in the first place, and somehow just allow free app downloads.
Point taken. I am currently iterating on the landing page so I'll try out a few different variances that don't mention the .10 cents deal.
Maybe I'll even try and find some relatively cheap A/B testing software, that would be a fantastic resource. Anyone know of any?
I'm assuming you mean "free app downloads" as in paid apps just downloaded for free? This would be very nice... sadly I can't seem to think of a way without a deep partnership with apple and the app store.
Google WebSite Optimizer does A/B testing and is free.
You have to have AdWords account though.
I recommend you to create AdWords account anyway and try to advertise your service that way.
You would have to spend some money, but not much, and the time you would save would probably worth it.
Alot of apps have free versions that people release. If the free version could be unlocked to be the real version, that could work. Apple probably doesn't allow that, though.
An alternative approach might be to give out a raffle ticket instead of .20c and put an iPad or something as a price. This might also make it a bit fun.
Actually, getting a paid app for free is only a sweet deal if the app really has value-- and if it really has value, why are they paying me to take it?
I'm trying to understand your business model, I really am, but for the life of me I can't figure out why I (as a developer/owner) would want to pay people to download my apps-- except for testing purposes, of course.
It might be true that any app worth its salt simply doesn't need this service and if that's the case then the service won't succeed its as simple as that.
I think one of my underlying assumptions is that people are willing to pay to get out of the deluge of apps that are currently in the store. As an indie developer without a big company behind you its often very easy to get lost in everything. If the problem truly is that the app "got lost" then a service such as this could put it in the hands of people who will recommend it etc. That being said this is a fairly weak argument since an app that is good probably wouldn't have gotten lost in the first place.
The reasoning behind my current price structure is that I often find myself aimlessly wandering the app store and eventually download a few free apps and usually get suckered into a paid app. My site (assuming it grows) would provide a way to aimlessly get exposure to apps [...]
See, now that sounds much better than "get paid to try apps." Discoverability in the AppStore sucks, and is definitely an open problem to be solved. If you can build a search engine/review site/categorization system/whatever that can make it easier for me to find interesting Apps-- well, that's a business idea I can believe in.
If that's the case, who is your target audience? It sure wasn't me, because my time is more valuable than that-- you'd have to raise your rates by several orders of magnitude before I'd be interested. Which is also why I don't spend my time on the Mechanical Turk.
But, it seems to me that the people who do so are the kind of people you might be interested in. So, if that's the case, why not spend some money there on testing/market research?
In other words, pay people (via MTurk) to test out your service (which will involve them also getting paid). In exchange for the "extra" MTurk money, you can ask them a few questions about how well the service worked, and where they think it should be advertised.
And, if it works well, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them become repeat users, even outside of MTurk.