1. know what you mean about sample set. its hard to get exactly the right person but close enough is good for me. 2. for the public places, i have seen a few people on sports sites and go up to them. (we built a new sports site)
i've seen ethnio.com, good call. in terms of being an evangelist, im not at all. the real issue is that most startups NEVER do this, i wanted to document what i've done and if people want to use/benefit then good. if not, sucks for them.
I do agree that startups should be doing more. You have done a good job of giving some steps to get started, so kudos.
totally discounting the value of watching customers to improve a product means that the discounter has never had the visceral "i suck" feeling of watching a customer stumble through a product he's designed and built.
Some problems with the article.
1. Craigslist is fine but it will bias the users. If you ask people to do it for free, you're getting one subset of users (who are actually usually pretty decent). If you pay people, you open it up to a much wider, more motivated pool -- but you get "professional" test subjects.
2. Going to a random public place and asking people to try it is good for a shotgun approach, but if you're trying to get coverage for your target audience (particular if there is a certain demographic you need for monetization) this is a no-go.
As to the rest of the article's content... well, I don't want to rain on the guy's new-found usability evangalism, but this is pretty basic, heavily skewed stuff. It seems like he's passing on what his 'mentor' has told him completely uncritically. Particularly the Nielsen stuff. Ugh.
For people who do want to do free user testing for their site, I highly recommend ethnio.com. This allows you to target your existing site users and works great.
