...Crazy people!
Goth and Roger are really talking about two different things.
Goth your site shows retention better because you do not offer a trial. It is easy for most any paysite to hit 3.5-4.5 average retention ratio because their is no trial.
You add in a trial and it drops it to 2 months..If your lucky.
Once your site is at a point of massive amount of content, exlcusive series, good video, something that makes it worth the money people will retain a tad longer.
Even from site to site within the same niche and same content will retain differently. Colors, looks, ect all factor in.
I think roger is talking about his paysites. Which are trial based. If Roger does the math after the trial the rentetion is stupid high which he knows.
Goth your site is totally different. Their is no trial so ofcourse your retention is going to longer.
We have exclusive content, personal bios, chat boards, live shit, interviews with porn stars, everything to make our site(s) more exclusive. The only improvment we saw was the trial to full membership ratio. Our big dick sites out convert and out retain our teen sites while our boobsite which is almost all exclusive content does the worst out of all our sites. Is it the look? No our members area all have the same layout with different graphics.
I have not seen anyone in years that is doing over 4 month average retention ratio even with no trials.
2% of all members forget...That helps
Now you might be thinking then why have trials. Well fact is without trials you can't convert as well...
So if I get 100,000 hits with no trials and convert 1:1000 I get 100 signups X 29.95 = $2995
100,000 hits convert at 1:500 = 200 X 4.95 = $990
200 at 35% converstion ratio (average) 70 X 29.95 = $2095.50
Add the two together $3086.50 I win with trials. As well I have 100 extra credit card e-mails, more members in my members area to get up sells, sex shops, special promos to stay longer, whatever. I end up with the damn near the same member base growth even with bad ratios.
The main goal for pay per join money programs is to get that trial to full month membership ratio as high as possible as we all know what the average retention ratio is going to be after the trial.
With cross sales they are not blind. They click the button it's not checked by default. Cross sales are normally picked on the niche of the site as well if the money programs did "SCREW" the member they would bitch and the complaints on this are very low. They want it..Reason we know this for a fact is if their is ever an error with a password they want access to that site to check it out. They know what the fuck is going on.
As for paysite owners screwing the surfer? Some people yes, the major programs..NO! Epoch/Ibill ect jump our asses for simple password or database errors. I think you have it backwards...It's members screwing us. Fucking charging back saying they never used the site when we know for a fact what date and time they used the members area. Reqeusting refunds under the same thing...Members fuck paysite owners 10 times worse than any paysite fucks members. For the most part