How to Get Paid for Giving Feedback on Shopify Apps

If you run a Shopify store, you already have something app developers will pay for: you know what it's actually like to use their products every day.

Most Shopify apps are built by developers who have never packed an order, answered a "where is my package?" email at 11pm, or juggled three discount apps that don't talk to each other. They know it, too — which is why a growing number of them pay merchants for structured feedback before and after they build.

Why would a developer pay for my opinion?

Because building the wrong thing is the most expensive mistake an app developer can make. A typical app takes months to build. If it solves a problem merchants don't actually have — or solves it in a way that doesn't fit how stores really operate — those months are wasted.

Compared to that, paying a merchant for ten minutes of honest answers is the cheapest insurance available. You're not doing them a favour; you're providing a professional service. That's why it's paid.

What does the work actually look like?

At MAPI, feedback comes in three formats, and you choose which requests to accept:

• Quick questionnaires (~10 minutes). Short structured forms about how you run your store, which apps you use, and where they fall short. You can answer from your phone, whenever suits you.
• Screen recordings (~15 minutes). You record yourself using an app and narrate what you're thinking — where it's confusing, what you expected, what you'd change. Developers consider this the most valuable feedback there is.
• Live sessions (~30 minutes, always optional). A one-on-one call with a developer who wants to dig deeper into your workflow.

Everything is one session at a time. No subscriptions, no recurring commitments, no preparation — your existing experience running your store is the entire qualification.

What makes feedback valuable?

Honesty, mostly. Developers don't want compliments; they want to know where their app fights your workflow. The most useful things you can tell a developer are usually:

• What you do manually because no app does it well
• Which app you almost uninstalled, and what stopped you
• What you expected a feature to do versus what it actually did
• The spreadsheet you still keep outside Shopify, and why

You don't need to be technical. If anything, non-technical answers are more useful, because most merchants aren't technical either.

How to get started

We're currently onboarding our founding group of merchants. Signing up takes about two minutes — tell us your niche, your Shopify plan, and the apps you rely on, and we'll match you with developers building for stores like yours.

Join as a founding merchant — spots per niche are limited so developers get a range of perspectives.