how the hell do you find beta testers?
ngl i did not expect this part to be so hard. building a saas right now and need people to actually test it, so i started where everyone tells you to start: friends, ex-coworkers, people from my network. everyone nods, says "yeah sure send it over", and then... nothing. "super busy right now", "gonna check it next week", and next week never comes.
i dont really want to pay for testers. they get the tool free for a while in exchange, which i thought was a fair trade. apparently its not attractive enough? or maybe free isnt actually a strong incentive when peoples time is the real bottleneck.
target users are marketing managers, content writers and heads of marketing if that matters. so not exactly a group thats sitting around with free time on their hands.
stuff i've considered but not sure about:
cold outreach on linkedin (feels spammy and conversion is probably brutal)
posting in communities like this one or niche slack groups (worried about coming across as self promo)
paid platforms like userinterviews or respondent (kinda defeats the "free in exchange for feedback" model)
reaching out to people who complain about the exact problem on twitter/linkedin (low volume but maybe higher intent)
so my actual question: how did you guys actually get your first 10-20 beta users? what worked, what was a waste of time? and is there a point where you just have to accept that you need to pay for testers if you want serious engagement and not just polite nods