Do not PAY customers to be using your product. It is happening often these days. Yes, startups actually pay users to use their products, well past the initiation phase but at growth phase. Instead of paying customers, use a double play strategy and capture value differently while having a clearview to ascertain a product’s viability.
Avoid the trap of using payment to acquire customers at the early phase of your startup. It is a very bad idea because doing so introduces many fudge factors which will make it impossible to know the product viability.
As I have noted, do not pursue customer growth unless you are able to RETAIN customers. Why? You can spend all the money and if you are unable to retain customers, once you stop paying those customers, they go.
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Focus on what matters: make customers become FANS and that means loving your products because you offer value.
You can spend money on initial launch to kickstart a business. It is one way of breaking customer inertia. But sustained paid-driven growth strategy will fail. Focus on what matters and stop chasing vanity metrics.
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