Trial or No Trial

it's a tough one...i still mes with the pricing structure....just changed it today...i always had expensive trials until today...7.95 converting at 29.95 or a normal membership at an initial 24.95....if you have tons of content i think a cheap trial could be goodbcause they will go in there and see they cant possibly see everything in 2 days...and if you update all the time they will get hooked on that aspect

Why not use both?
Set the join page to monthly subscriptions - If the subscriber doesn't like the price - he will close the page - Then pop up a new join page offering him a trial subscription.

Best of both Worlds!

depends on the site.
if u can download everything, chances are that they wont stay pass the trial. u promise updates perhaps. and price is also a consideration. 30bux is ok.

gay or not gay?

pros & cons?

Use 3 day trials if you update very often with lots of content. Else, use monthly.

Personally I prefer NO trial....

have a trial but don't let the sufer have access to the full site until he becomes a full member

trial or no ... the question is now

I've been asked this question by a zillion clients. It's pretty much a question answered by simple numerical analysis. In the vast majority of the cases you will make more money with trials than you will without. If you build a real paysite and not a sad excuse for one, then your conversion from trial to full membership should fall between 20% and 30% (barring oddities in billing company crap which you have to watch out for). Generally with a trial your conversion rate will be about four times better. So in this oversimplified analysis the answer is that if your trial conversion is better than 25% then you make more money with trials (assuming the avg. four times better conversion with it).

So for me, when I make a site or build a site for clients I know I can get trials above the 25% mark and thusly, we always use them.

If you're just not sure what to do, run trials for a month then run a month without and compare the results. You only need to know two numbers to know if it worked for you:

1) Conversion
2) Trial conversion


One caveat... if you don't run a trial and you have a shitty members area you will run more chargebacks because people are more willing to blowoff a $3.95 ripoff than a $29.95 one.