[mitchbob]

Paying participants is standard practice for user research. You're showing that you value their time. If you don't have ready access to the kinds of participants you looking for, in most metropolitan areas around the world there are market research films that can find suitable participants and help you decide what's appropriate to pay them. You want the incentive to be high enough that you're not missing out on great people, but not so high that they're only doing it for the money.

[ky0ung]

thank you. do you happen to know the rate that they charge for the participant + the research firm's fee on average?

[mitchbob]

Both depend on how hard it is to find the people you're looking for; there are no hard and fast rules. For a study I did with C-level executives at modestly sized companies, the incentive was US$500 for 45 minutes, and I believe the market research firm got at least US$300 for each qualified participant it recruited. For easy to find consumers, $50/hour each for the incentive and $100 each for recruiting might be plenty. For the incentive, you need to ask: what would a really well qualified participant expect to get in exchange for the time they're giving you? And different markets will have different costs; NYC will almost certainly be more expensive than Chattanooga for both incentives and recruiting.

Market research firms use a screening questionnaire to find participants with the right qualifications, and writing a good screener takes some experience. If you're new to this, you may want to reach out to someone who's done it before.