free trials, worth it or not?
 

We are looking at offering free trials to get even more to see what we have to offer. Our paid trials are doing ok but not that extreme well as we would have hoped they would do. We can offer the free trials without any problems, but i would it help, i also see a lot of 1 dollar trails, but then i thought why not go free trials.

What is is your view on this?

thanks

As an affiliate I have always done better with $1 trials than free. I think maybe completely free makes the surfer (more) suspicious.

i would think $1 would sort out the cheapskates not willing to ever pay anyways....

I prefer low price trials over free, but often think that a $20 full membership with no trial might still be the better way to go

You want to check so that the customer has a creditcard and can pay later. Also, if he doesn't cancel the free trial, charge him for an automatic subscription. You want all to be setup at first, when he's still eager to join, because he sure isn't going to whip up the CC after three days - or at least, most won't. But many enough will be lazy and let an existing subscription just carry on.

Yep, I've seen the same results.

Hard to make money by giving away trials free, isn't it. But test it out, see how it goes.

Using short teaser clips that lead to the free trial join page works for me. Get them so horny (but not enought o bust a nut) and they just need to see more!

well it are free trails with ccbills, they have to use their cards.

I was thinking that they would be interested and then would be too lazy to cancel their membership.

I see many offering them, but as many as use to. maybe it is not working that well as many thought it would.

$1 works better than $0.

But with free trials you can preauth the full membership price, and just capture the transaction 2-3 days later... With $1 trials you are charging $1, and potentially paying a PPS on a card without the balance to rebill :2 cents:

There are only a few sponsors offering now free trials, this means something ...

:thumbsup

Always converted $1 better than free.

Yeah, from a program's point of view, its better. They get less joins with more value for their PPS payouts. The affiliate would make less, though.

I used to offer $3.95 2-day trials. Got a BUNCH then POOF! They stoppeed cold.
So I tried an odd trial: $7.95 5-day trial. ZERO signups.
Bottom line (IMHO): If someone is going to buy then they will pay the full price; anyone who does a 'trial' is either not a serious buyer or someone who wants to download the entire member's area for two bucks (and maybe throw all your shit onto the tube sites or torrent sites).
THEREFORE: fuck trials.

i concur.
my ratios on free trials suck. Always.

Europeans Billing Europe!
 

Check with your sponsors. Webbilling offers sponsors the ability to offer free and paid trials on direct debit non-card joins for Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom - if you are sending this country-traffic to sponsors only accepting credit cards you are losing money...they need Webbilling.com to capture every join...:)

To the question - I am seeing more sponsors opting for low paid trials recurring in 3-30 days than free trials...

Thats because most "free trials" come with 39.99 charge from some company in Gibraraltar and has to be disputed thru your bank.

Is that permitted? Even though it may not be settled it still reduces the card's available balance. :2 cents:

My old Visa Debit card showed up preauths immediately in the online transaction statement, then they'd disappear a few days later if they were not settled. Consider a surfer seeing a charge for $40 right after he does a "free" signup... or someone going for the free option because they've only got $50 left on their card which they need tomorrow to buy groceries... oops, they don't have $50 left now...

ok i got to make something clear. we are not running an affiliate program, this is going to convert our own traffic not that of an affiliate
i understand it would not be good for affiliate and also not for sponsors when they have to pay 20 bucks on a trial they have made nothing on.

its seems that cecash always has done good on their free trails and so has weg cash. Both sponsors i am still making good money with.

Nope...you can triple your sales with trials. And there is such a thing like limited members area, where you just tease the surfer, if its made right, 50% will go for full. So compared to only offering fullies, you make 50% more money.

any more thoughts?

I would offer together what my best programs do:
Option 1: $2.95 (or $4.95) for 3-day trial
Option 2: $29.95 full month
You serve both customers, the one that trusts a trial and the one that doesnt hehe

You should also consider the high CB risk with free trials when they convert. If the user is not willing to spend a few bucks for a trial you don't want him anyway.

Excellent point. I haven't done those things so my comments were based solely on my experience. But you're right - that would be a cool thing. More work for li'l ol' me, but a good idea. I've seen examples of member's areas that are partially blocked-out - a 'member' can see the other content but can't access it - and then if he upgrades he can see the entire mem area. Is this what you're talking about? :)

Low priced trials all the way!

well guess we are going to offer then all. free trails an low price trails and a full 29.95 membership price. see what does best and how. but we will mainly use free trails to advertise with at certain places.

I can see why you would feel that way with a full access trial. But a trial is just that-TO TRY out the site. At Ass Titans and Clara G we offer a 3 day limited trial for $2.95-he gets access to 3 sets. If he wants more-he has to upgrade his membership. Our trials convert very well for this reason. Why would you give your site away for pennies or worse-for free?

That's exactly how our members area works.
And it's a great idea to implement for your site.

Still interested in comments about preauth'ing a trial. Seems fishy to me.

I agree with the people above, I have a hard time selling free trials, but $1 trials, they sell great.

There are quite a few businesses that do this.
such as couriers, restaurants and gas stations;
->Do you need a fill up up to $120?
-->YES
--->pump up to $97.58 full tank.

check your avail balance its not -$97.58 but rather -$120
after it settles you get back your $22.42 that you didnt use.

surfer signsup for a free trial and gets a preauth of -29.95 IF he stays a member for the rebill period.
if he cancels it before the trial period is over the preauth goes away and the avail credit goes back to +29.95.

same difference :2 cents:

i like cheese

I like pie, and fraudulent affiliates not willing to spend thirty bucks on a $50 free join being too cheap to try to fuck me.

I understand how a preauth works, I'm just trying to comprehend how it could be used for a FREE TRIAL. In the gas scenario the actual transaction amount is known 5 minutes later as you finish pumping, in a free trial scenario the transaction may stay in a preauth state for 2 or 3 days?... How can selling a free trial which reduces your available balance be considered ethical?

the tiny TOS print that all the surfers read before they click SUBMIT :Oh crap

well to be honest, i think free trails should do great. as a surfer/buyer, i am not just going to buy something that cost me 30 bucks without even looking at what its going to offer me. There are so many members area out there that have shit content inside and their best content on the tour. I don't see why you would pay 1 buck if you can test drive it for like, like with a car.

Our paid trails are doing ok, but i guess more people would be willing to test drive us if it was for free and then stay.

PLus we are offering one day free access, so there no change to download our members area. Also we stream our content in flv, only the content for download is avi. You could think they can rip that with something like free download manager. but we have scripts in place that only let you download one link at a time. you can que them but this way we are sure they can't pull the site in one time.

We do how ever put a script in place that would cut free trails members from downloading our content.

This way its kinda of a limited members area. Our content you can't even download with a harvest tool. :)

I dont think anybody believes there is a "free trial" that asks for CC info. I think that's why paid trials convert better, they are perceived as more honest. Why ask for CC info if you're not going to charge? Not everyone is an idiot. Most, but not all.