Trials - Good Or Bad?
 

I just read an article about the online porn industry. We all know it is harder today than it was 2-3 years ago. One thing I always wonder about it recurring programs offering trial memberships.

Personally, I prefer recurring programs to only offer full membership subscriptions. Trials are ok for per sign ups, since they normally are very aggressive with upsells, and sponsors of their own(console ads). Oddly, there are only a handful of sites that do this, with Blacks On Blondes being the most well known of them.

Why aren't more sites doing this? With broadband, I can burn thru most members areas in 2-3 days, if I really want to. I am sure many surfers can do it in one weekend marthon whack-off session. So, why the fuck are sites letting them in for $5 instead of $20-$30?

I would like to hear some opinions/facts/replies from 3rd party billing reps, paysite operators, and yes, even other free site/SE/TGP webmasters. What do you think, and why?

i would not go with trials or even free trials

I'm all about full price memberships. Fuck trials and free signups.

Brad

agreed
fuck trials

well nobody trusts a per signup program unless it's converting like a mofo...

i personally think trials are a good idea because in the world there are lots of cheap people looking for a bargain -- if you make the guy work for his money (ie: download everything in a few days) -- then you can bet he is a cheap ass for sure and probably drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon so you wouldn't have made the sale anyway.

Hehe well but Steve I think you are right though because I think there are numbers to back up that trials just don't make as much money as no trials -- because they don't recurr/rebill as well in the long term... So in theory if you turn off trials and have really unique content there will be a few more guys willing to stretch their wallets to stay a member than if you had trials turned on (in which case they may think it's a bargain to cancel and come back a new trial later on...)

Right now though I don't give a shit about trials or rebills -- I just want to see awesome conversion ratios and good fucking sites w/ exclusive content...

I hope this tread blows up

I think it all depends on the paysite... Some paysites are better for free trials than others...
If the paysite is very great, there is nothing wrong in giving the surfer a 3-5 day trial, then he can see how great the site is, and stay there for ever... But if the paysite is crap, it would be a very bad idea to let him see that before he pays some money... :Graucho

at extremefineart.com this month we are turning off trials to see what happens...

I cannot compare with the Big Boys here but from my experience trials don't work. From time to time I try 3.95$ 3 day trial or 6.95$ for 5 days on my site but most users who signup for trial cancel right away (although some of them come back some time later).

What happens very often those 'trial' users try to download my whole website with Teleport of other program so they can view it online!

Funny thing is that even with the trial price the majority of the signups are full price - those trials usually make less than 25% of all signups (in terms of numbers, not $$$)!

the only trial program that converts like crazy for me is Soulcash and Ox Cash. like 80% of my Bangbus or Realbutts converts to full signups.Its one of the rare programs that pays u more for conversions than straight out signups

yeah it's the site that makes money -- not the billing methodology...

As both an owner of paysites and free site / tgp/ll/egp/cloak submission farms, all I can say is that trials work if you're an affiliate. They're more problematic if you're a paysite owner. The guys who manage my programs get around the problem by either making the trial period very long [1 month] or very short [3 days] or pairing it with another adult service.

Another issue to deal with in regards to trials is setting the right price point, this may seem trivial but it seems, at least from my network's experience, to impact full sign ups and rebills.


Good luck!

Yup I agree..

DOWN WITH TRIALS!

Hit the cheap cock suckers with $29.95 right off the bat.. If the tour is good they'll sign up.. I wont push a recurring prog with trials any more..

Peace

I'm giving up on partnership programs as well. I try some new site send 5 trials and ALL cancel.

Should have taken my $175 if I went with per-sign-up. ($35 a pop)
This sponsor made money on exit popups and upsells I'm sure. Meanwhile I get shit, not even enough cash to make the minimum payment.

I actually think trials should be removed but membership prices come down.
Maybe $19.95/month no trial at all.

I think people download what they can, whack off a few times to the live shows and streaming vids then quit.
If they didn't have a trial, I bet they wouln't be in such a hurry to quit.

Trials Blow !!!!!

I ran some tests with the help of one of the bigger sponsors out there where we tried a few different approaches...

1. 2.95 trial...
2. 24.95 / month
3. straight to the signup page (no tour) @ 24.95

The trial only brought in a couple more signups on basically the same traffic.... and almost none of them converted...

The no trial signups are currently rebilling like crazy this month.

There's lots of variables and "what ifs" involved in this but this is the basic bottom line - Trials Blow !!!

:Graucho

Maybe the question should be rephrased along the lines of:

As an affiliate webmaster, would you be more inclined to sign up for a program if they will pay you for trial signups?

My guess is that if the program is structured as pay per signup then most would go along. If set up as a partnership, there may be issues....as judged by the earlier entries to this thread.

The trial system helps per sign up programs recruit webmaster affiliates. In other situations, it may not work well.

Depends on the site and the monthly charge I suppose.
For the per signup proggies that charge $40+ per month, you're going to have a really hard time getting someone to spend that much right upfront without having seen the members area.

If the price point is $20-25 a month, then you have a better chance getting the initials, and people who sign up for a monthly right off the bat tend to stay longer than trial subscriptions that get rebilled.


I've played with trials and no trials on tours, and most of the time I get SO MANY MORE initials by offering a trial, that even though they only rebill at 30-40%, I still make a lot more $$ overall by offering the trial. And overall $$ is what its all about right?

FUCK A TRIAL

If the surfer really likes your site and wants to join they will regardless if you have a trial or not. If you give them the option most will choose the trial over the full term membership.

Say your site's full membership is 30.00
Say you have a trial membership of 5.00
Say your site gets 20 signups a day.
I think it's safe to say that if you have a trial option at least 15 of your 20 signups will be trials. (based on my experience)
so you take in 75 bucks on your free trials & 150 bucks on your regular memberships. total=$225


now say you have no trial and say 5 (25%) of the 20 cheap bastards didnt sign up because you had no trial.
you still have 15 signups x 30 = $450

you simply just made an additional 225 dollars that day X 30 days a month = $6750.00 more money in yours and your partners pockets.

Not hard to figure out if you just think about it. As far as your rebill ratios, they will stay the same or be slightly higher with no trial than with a trial.

i have about the same ratios for free/trial/full ... whereby i am making 3-5 times more money with full memberships.

I can see I am not alone in preferring recurring sponsors to NOT offer trials. Now, I am not about to tell anyone how to run their business. I would like to know if this is something that would be easy to offer advertising partners. Could a small paysite that uses CCBill, Epoch, iBill, or whomever else, easily offer different tour options? For example:

link to tour A (with $3.00 2/day trial)
link to tour B (with $7.00 4/day trial)
link to tour C (no trial, one month full membership or 3 month options only)

I use a number of small sites. I see that they do get trials easier than per sign up sponsors (on avg). But, I do not see such hot conversions from trial to full membership. Since most of these sites don't cost $40-$50, like some of the top per sign up sponsors do, I believe that the surfer will cave in to hormone overload, and buy the one month subscription, IF the more affordable trial is not available. I think the fact is, I get them horny for it, and they are not familiar with this site, so their curiosity will get the best of them.

With the Dark Dollars sites (which I'll be spamming our 3 new sites in the next few days ;))) we have one with a $9.95/3 day and one witha $7/.95 3 day and don't see much of a difference...we're workiong on sending our own traffic to a no trial option to see how it works....but I have a feeling that it's not going to vary much...

remember with general sites, there is more competition so they have to ofer things like trials and cheaper lead in prices....but I'm still convinced that most porn surfers aren't comparative shopping when they have the urge to purge thier dicks........

memberships are rock solid money machine.:BangBang:

LOL ..... can I use that line in a gallery..??
:thumbsup



Hey Fizz !! ...Read this !!!
It will make your stay here at GFY a more pleasant experience.

I turned oxcash's trials off and my ratio didn't change, of course this is not a rule 4 all paysites.

Personally, i hate trials

A site of any size can do alot of customizable stuff like that with us -- CCBill -- if they are willing to put a bit more time and effort into the install and the reseller setup.

It's entirely possible to allow resellers to CHOOSE what circumstances they want to send their traffic to a site under.

There are a few things about paysites that resellers don't often take into account unless they are on a partner split, since there's no reason for them to worry about it on a pay per join program.

However the pay per join operator still has to worry about making his money back, there's no way around that. You can't pay someone 35 bucks on a join that you made 3 dollars on net.

Steve.

With ccbill who I use, and I guess the others processors the same, you can set up as many subaccounts as you want.

Each subaccount has its own separate join page and pricing options.

If you find any ccbill site that is offering a trial option but you would prefer they didn't just email them, because its very easy to sort out. Just a matter of setting the subaccount up and making a copy of the tour that links to the new sign up page

matty

Hi Everyone!

I'm new to gfy. I love reading this board, and you seem like a great bunch of webmasters.

I think that trial memberships are wonderful if the sites you are promoting are good. If you are just promoting cookie-cutter sites with generic content, then no seasoned user is going to stay after the trial period.

That is the whole purpose of trials, anyway, which is to allow the surfer to sample the content. Most member webmasters seem to have forgotten the reason that trials began in the first place, and so they don't work well for their sites.

If you have a membership site that is loaded with great content and is updated every day, then there would be incentive for the trial members to stay for the period of the trial member to become a paying member. Not too many sites are that good, though.

We've had the trial on for a few weeks, just to see how it worked. However we hardly noticed any increase, and it did not change the bottomline at all.
Even if it had increased a little I'm not sure we would have kept it on. We offer the surfer what equals almost 400 dvd's and give them something that equals like 1/2 a new dvd a day. If they were to go out and buy this stuff on dvd's it would definetely cost them way more than the 24.95 we charge them. I see absolutely no reason why we should give them access for 2.95 unless it really increased the bottomline significantly and it did not.

I've made all my money in this biz from recurring sponsors without trials, and I've very seldom seen conversion ratios higher than 1:250 - 1:300 if ever during 2 1/2 year. It's simply a myth that people won't buy memberships, they want to, but they wanna make sure they're not getting ripped off.

As long as the tour is informative enough about what is offered, and the content inside is of decent quality I see no reason for a trial, it simply costs you money and sends the wrong signal to the surfers.

:) Lars

bad...btw i just bought herbal penis pills