I pay my own employees a $400 bonus to use and review our product - here's why it's worth every penny

• Sarah Smith is the founder of The Dyrt, a camping app for sharing reviews and tips of campgrounds.
• Smith has offered employees a $400 bonus per quarter to write a field report on using the app.

Using a product in the real world is different from working on it and testing it in an office setting. The stakes are higher. There are frustrations that become apparent only when you're really relying on something.

When I started The Dyrt, I set out to create a product that I really needed - an app that was a comprehensive source of reviews and photos of campgrounds throughout the US. At every stage of its evolution, I've used The Dyrt myself to find camping. Currently, I use it every day while running the company from a converted camper van.

For a long time, it felt like the process of gathering data in the field fell solely on me. I didn't mind because my team was small. But as we grew I started to wonder: How can I get our employees to share their experiences using our app? Here's what I did and what worked.

Compensation for documentation

I knew at least some of our employees were using The Dyrt to find camping, and I realized what we were missing was a record of their experience. If your team is using your product in their off hours, what you really need is thorough documentation, and it seems only fair to pay them for the work.

Here's what we came up with: Starting in January 2021, each employee of The Dyrt can do a field report once per quarter where they give a brief presentation on how they used the app to go camping. They report what worked well and what didn't, and they share other suggestions or insights. In exchange, they get a $400 bonus.

Field reports are completely optional. We have some employees who've never done one and others who have done three. Some look to max out that bonus and have been doing a report every quarter so far, so they can make an extra $1,600 per year.

Seeing the whole elephant

With about 50 employees, we spend almost as much on the field report program as we would on another full-time employee. It's worth every penny.

The feedback our employees come back with is quite valuable. It's so much more in depth than a two-star review in the App Store. When our employees are also users, they can really pinpoint issues that otherwise we might miss.

We have so many different kinds of campers on the team, from backpackers to RV campers with kids. We know a feature that's used by one type of camper might not necessarily be used by a different type of camper, so it's important to get varying perspectives. One feature we're working on now is showing which type of camping - standard campground, dispersed camping, or overnight parking - is available in map view. Our recently launched cell-coverage feature also stemmed from field-report feedback.

It's also interesting to see someone who works on a particular aspect of our product interacting with it as a whole. It's like the parable of the blind men and the elephant. One is touching the leg, one is touching the trunk, and they can't agree on what the thing is. Paying our employees to document using our product - and present it to our whole team - helps all of us see the whole elephant.

An unusual perk

Field reports have become a great recruiting and retention tool for us - it's tough to leave a job that pays you to camp.

At first, paying your employees to use your product might seem kind of crazy. They built the thing and maintain it - they already know it better than anyone else, right? That may be true. But if your customers rely on you for something they're investing a lot of time and money into, like a camping trip, your employees need to know what that feels like. And in order to improve the product, they also need to document their experience, share it, and be rewarded for it.

Once they do, you'll be able to capture the creativity and different perspectives of your employees, and your business will be stronger for it.

Sarah Smith is the founder of The Dyrt, the top camping app in the iOS and Android app stores with more than 4 million campground reviews and tips. She has loved camping since childhood and in 2013 she left a career in education to become an entrepreneur dedicated to making camping easier for everyone.