Payite Tip - Trials or No Trials?
 

Over the years I've posted a bunch of tips to help increase paysite revenues. I had some people suggest I put them all in one place so I hope no one takes offense to me not pasting the text into the post but instead building an archive at my site. I can at least do some charts and such that way too and of course I hope to get some biz out of sharing tips as well.

Anyway, this month I made one for how to choose whether or not to run a trial. The info is all here:
http://www.guaranteeddesigns.com/freepaysitetips.html

I hope ya'll find it useful. Hopefully I can start getting some Photoshop tips going again soon too.

Good stuff man! ill check it out

=] Thanks. I wanted to be able to show more examples but it takes a lot of space and basically two patterns emerge across a line showing that the trials usually work better only on larger sites/programs that can have the retention numbers to support it.

Opinion, if a site is very niche (micro niche) and the variety of competing sites is minimal and one updates often and maintains good retention. What is your thoughts then.

All those factors should always bring up your retention. conversion from trials should be better too but only if there is enough content there that they don't beat off to everything they want in the first couple days. Month to month retention is often about regular updates and things like smart coming soon placements. Trial conversion more often falls into hitting your customer with sd many things that interest them that they don't feel they can get it all in the trial period. Limited trials work VERY well too.

The best thing to do early on is to try both options but maybe only with your own traffic or an affiliate you are close to, then compare the numbers and plug them into something like my spreadsheet so you can divine the long term results.

Mark is one of the longtime veterans of this industry.

-K-Man

I did for sure


Make it a blog so we can subcribe to your feed. You have awesome tips

Will only work if the content is exclusive. :1orglaugh

Thanks for the analysis Mark. Your tips are always a welcomed change of pace to the sea of crap that is posted.

good read but Im anti trial too many downloaders around.

Thanks man.

That's actually a pretty dang good idea. I'll have to put that together next week sometime.

Yeah for the pretty large majority of sites out there it just won't work because they don't have enough or haven't set up limited trials (or even download caps). But it definitely can work and don't forget that for guys big enough to do PPS on a trial, they can get so much more traffic from it that it becomes very worth looking at.

One day I am either gunna choke you or have wild angry fight sex with you.
:winkwink:

You guys should get in a big verbal battle in this thread so it stays on the top for about three days. :1orglaugh

Very nice man. :thumbsup

Great tips... but "enough content" is a broad statement. There are sites with a ton of content that's seen all over the place. There are sites with alot of content that is low quality and/or doesn't quite meet the niche or what is presented and promised on the tour...

Limited trials.. hmm.. well in theory it should do well. If done right should always do well. But I know lots of sites don't offer that much more than in the limited trial. If that sort of practice gets out of control, surfers will see that and say "fuck this" because of something they've experienced before.

I dunno.. :2 cents:

Real good point man. People can abuse it and then it becomes a good idea gone bad. The same thing is what caused the death of the old style tours because everyone promised the world and delivered shit content. People don't believe the text any more... they need to see samples. Think of "reality" tours... all they are really is your members area with the download option linked to a join. You have some diff text but for the most part it's just a members area. You get exactly what you see when you join.

You can take just about any good quality content, doesn’t have to be exclusive. Open the members area with 20 sets and add a new downloadable movie & photo set each week. Setup the trial upgrade members area with 5 sets, both trial and full member areas should update weekly. From here the site will convert about 50% of the trials and retain about the same.

Really, you don’t even have to update either if you just lay it out correctly and offer enough stale content. It will still convert trials at 50% and retain at 50%. Even people that update 3 times a day, depending on the niche, still only retain 50%.

The secret is people convert 65+% trials and retain 75% monthly.



PPS vs Revshare, is no secret. PPS makes more net profit, you will get more traffic with a pps program. Average joins with long term retention come out to $85+. PPS would profit $50, plus exits, xsales, ect.. The Revshare would profit $42, probably doesn’t earn money on the exits and no xsales. PPS is much harder to operate, fraud is 10 times worse, and it can take many months before any real net profits start to role in.

Nice discussion Mark. Nice to see an actual business discussion on here from time to time.

And a good point about reality tours and the reason they are successful. When a member gets inside, he usually isn't disappointed. On the other hand, there isn't a lot of surprise either, which I think is always important in keeping members happy and feeling satisfied long term. Understate what you have on the tour, and wow them in the members area.

Read what this man has said carefully. It's all gospel. His experience with the numbers bores out across many client examples I've been involved in as well. That's why my final scenario shows 50% TC and 50% reten.

Thanks Mark. I like your site very much. It's always helpful.

what is a payite?

It's kinda like a paysite but it's in ICQese.

interesting read, thanks for doing it all up!

Thanks for the great read as usual man... nice to see almongst the bullshit posts!

Well we have to do business once in awhile or how we gonna eat? :winkwink:

3 day trial works great for us...:thumbsup