| Been banging my head against the wall here and could really use your collective wisdom. I'm running research for a B2B SaaS product and need to interview ~15 product managers (our target audience). The problem? I have zero budget for panels like UserTesting ($50-200/participant is just not possible right now). Here's what I've tried so far: LinkedIn outreach — spent hours crafting personalized messages. Response rate: maybe 5%. Most people just ignore. My personal network — exhausted after 3 interviews. Plus it's biased (all people I already know). Twitter/LinkedIn posts — got a few likes, zero sign-ups. Slack communities — some communities ban "recruitment posts", others just get ignored. Emailing existing users — we don't have a big user base yet. Classic chicken-and-egg. I'm spending more time hunting for participants than actually doing research. Something feels broken. For those of you who've been there: How do YOU find qualified participants without paying $50-200 per person? What's your actual response rate from free channels? Have you ever skipped research entirely because recruitment was too hard? If you've got 3 minutes, I made a short survey about this problem. Would love to hear your experience — and I'll share the results with everyone who participates. https://validatey.vercel.app/s/z34noiu Thanks in advance. This community has saved me more times than I can count. |