Low Priced Trials - Good Or Bad?

With the economy in its current condition, what are your folks thoughts on programs that offer trials?

Do you think that by continuing to offer trials during these harsh economic times they are actually maintaining decent income levels or do you think that surfers are actually cancelling their initial trial memberships as prudently as they are full priced recurring memberships?

From tests i have done in the past i really havent noticed any major significance between conversions from trial to full or from regular monthly to regular monthly memberships so im wondering if the sponsors currently offering rediculously low priced trials are actually hurting the industry overall at the current time or whether they are somehow doing us some good.

Your thoughts? Do you think that those still offering low priced trials are still making money and, do you think that offering low priced trials right now is hurting or helping the online porn industry overall?

Regards,

Lee

Lee, let me share with you and the board my own experience. I'm currently charging $27,95 for one month recurring at $24,95. I have a non recurring option of $32,95. And I have a 90 days offer at $59,95 recurring at 24,95 monthly, or $79,95 one time only.

In rough figures, around half of the sales are 27,95 recurring, and around 2 thirds cancel before the second month -i.e. one third recurres. The other half are 32,95 non recurring.

The 90 days options sell very little, let's say 10 or 15 per month. Of course, I love those customers :)

Then I tried a promo with a 7 days trial for $14,95 recurring at $24,95 every month. Unfortunately, Verotel does not allow periods shorter than 7 days, otherwise I would have tried $9,95 for 3 days.

What hapenned was that new sales share were: around one third took the trial, another third the 30 days recurring and another third the 30 days non recurring.

More or less, 30% of those who bought the trial recurred for one month.

In global figures, I was getting new customers but all in all I was invoicing almost the same or even a bit less.

So I don't have the 14 days trial any longer.

In the next days I will try a new offer: 60 days at $39,95 recurring at $35,95every 60 days. Do you think this will work?

I encourage every one in the forum to tell us how do they price their sites (what, after all, is public info) and how do their sales split in the different options.

And, also: Broke Straight Boys (among several others) offer a $1 suscription, any idea of how do they manage to offer such a low price? Where's the trick?

Thanks!

$14.95 isn't really a low trial - it's a pretty high priced trial. of course, it's a pain that you can't do a 3-day trial. the big questions that might affect retention - how big is your site, what niche is it, is the content exclusive, are the models and scenarios true to your niche, how often do you update with a full video, are the videos good quality and big, are they downloadable, is it only a single stand-alone site?

as far as broke straight boys goes, they have several exclusive sites in their network that update weekly or more and there's a lot of content plus bonus stuff. all sites include several formats of large downloadable full scenes. that certainly would make a difference in retention.

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Originally Posted by jorgebianco

Lee, let me share with you and the board my own experience. I'm currently charging $27,95 for one month recurring at $24,95. I have a non recurring option of $32,95. And I have a 90 days offer at $59,95 recurring at 24,95 monthly, or $79,95 one time only.

In rough figures, around half of the sales are 27,95 recurring, and around 2 thirds cancel before the second month -i.e. one third recurres. The other half are 32,95 non recurring.

The 90 days options sell very little, let's say 10 or 15 per month. Of course, I love those customers :)

Then I tried a promo with a 7 days trial for $14,95 recurring at $24,95 every month. Unfortunately, Verotel does not allow periods shorter than 7 days, otherwise I would have tried $9,95 for 3 days.

What hapenned was that new sales share were: around one third took the trial, another third the 30 days recurring and another third the 30 days non recurring.

More or less, 30% of those who bought the trial recurred for one month.

In global figures, I was getting new customers but all in all I was invoicing almost the same or even a bit less.

So I don't have the 14 days trial any longer.

In the next days I will try a new offer: 60 days at $39,95 recurring at $35,95every 60 days. Do you think this will work?

I encourage every one in the forum to tell us how do they price their sites (what, after all, is public info) and how do their sales split in the different options.

And, also: Broke Straight Boys (among several others) offer a $1 suscription, any idea of how do they manage to offer such a low price? Where's the trick?

Thanks!

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Im personally not a big fan of sites that charge something like $29.95 for the initial membership then rebills the consumer at a lower price such as $24.95.

To me, and this is just my own personal opinion, it actually makes the charge stand out on the consumers credit card and i think that plays a lot in the members mind, if they have a regular charge for the same price hitting their card, they arent going to think anything of it, but if they get hit for $29.95, then $24.95, then $20.95, etc, etc (which some sites do) there is no consistency with the credit card statement and as i say, i think that will raise more red flags than having a consistent charge for $29.95.

The other reason i dont like this business model when it comes to charging the member lower price points on rebills, with the exception of initial multi-month memberships renewing to single monthly billing memberships, is that as an affiliate, i am losing out on that $5, if the member has signed up for $29.95, they have already proven they feel the value of your site is $29.95, so they will be happy to rebill at that same price point for as long as they want their membership.... All those lost $5 over the course of a membership equate to a lot of lost revenues, for both the affiliate who sent the initial sale and the program itself.

This is actually also the reason i dislike programs that offer rediculously low priced trials or 'free' memberships, if the surfer joins for $3 that means they attach a low value to your site, if they join for 'free' then they basically think the site they are joining is worthless.

In addition to design, content, marketing expertise, the perceived value of a site in the surfer/members mind must also be taken in to account, by lowering the price points of our paysites, we lower that perceived value in the surfers mind, of course, if we price out sites to high, then the surfer is simply not going to beleive that the site is worth the money based on their previous experiences of joining lower priced membership based websites.

In terms of price points for multi-month memberships, we currently charge members $89.95 for 90 days, then every 30 days after that they get charged $39.95.

I dabbled with cheaper trials and shorter length memberships a year or so back and quite frankly, didnt notice any significant increase or decrease in revenues generated so i hiked the price back up to full monthly or multi-month memberships.

Regards,

Lee

Lee, what happens in my opinion is that customers buying their first month get a lot of value (the entire site) while the following months they get only the updates, specially if the site uses no drm so that the customer already downloaded all the stuff of his interest.

That's the basis of charging a lower price in the following months.

Another thing that seem to work very well (but I don't have the option in Verotel) is offering a discount in the exact moment the customer is canceling. Sean Cody, for instance does it. When you cancel, they offer you to stay for around 13 bucks a month.

From what I've heard, results are pretty good. And sounds quite fair since, again, what you're selling in these cases is just the updates of that given month.

Cancellation discounts are good but, they very rarely work. If a customer is going to cancel, it is because they have grown bored of the site or, have found a newer site that has piqued their interest instead.

Instead we offer the consumer an option via CCBills cancellation email to join another site, usually a live cam provider like ImLive.

As you say, if the customer has already downloaded all the stuff in their first month and they are only getting the updates... There is nothing to stop them from downloading all of those as well, what most site owners do not realize is that is actually costs them MORE in terms of existing customers downloading new updates 'per update' than it does on the initial month, because you are set to doing updates, you must update in order to keep the member rebilling, whilst when the member first joins, they already have an excess of content available to them in the members area.

If the consumer has joined at full price, keep them rebilling at full price and off-set your raised costs of maintaining them as a rebilling member.

Regards,

Lee

did you test both the same and the lower price to see if one rebilled better? my own experience and that of my clients is that when the prices are so similar, having lower priced rebills didn't make any difference to member retention and simply made a little less money per member for each rebill.

btw, my stats on all my sites over the years show that members rewatch their favorite videos again and again, so they'll be watching them as well as the updates. and if you have a blog or forum, that will also keep members involved, not to mention updating third-party bonus sites.

my experience is that most webmasters tend to under-value or over-value what their members will find their site is worth.

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Originally Posted by jorgebianco

Lee, what happens in my opinion is that customers buying their first month get a lot of value (the entire site) while the following months they get only the updates, specially if the site uses no drm so that the customer already downloaded all the stuff of his interest.

That's the basis of charging a lower price in the following months.

Another thing that seem to work very well (but I don't have the option in Verotel) is offering a discount in the exact moment the customer is canceling. Sean Cody, for instance does it. When you cancel, they offer you to stay for around 13 bucks a month.

From what I've heard, results are pretty good. And sounds quite fair since, again, what you're selling in these cases is just the updates of that given month.

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lee, i've always done very well with cancellation discounts, but as with my above comment, only if they're low enough. a guy who's cancelling because he doesn't want to pay $29.95 a month isn't very likely to respond to an offer of $24.95 but we've seen good results at $14.95 and $9.95. but a lot of webmasters aren't willing to give that deep a discount.

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Originally Posted by Lee

Cancellation discounts are good but, they very rarely work. If a customer is going to cancel, it is because they have grown bored of the site or, have found a newer site that has piqued their interest instead.

Instead we offer the consumer an option via CCBills cancellation email to join another site, usually a live cam provider like ImLive.

As you say, if the customer has already downloaded all the stuff in their first month and they are only getting the updates... There is nothing to stop them from downloading all of those as well, what most site owners do not realize is that is actually costs them MORE in terms of existing customers downloading new updates 'per update' than it does on the initial month, because you are set to doing updates, you must update in order to keep the member rebilling, whilst when the member first joins, they already have an excess of content available to them in the members area.

If the consumer has joined at full price, keep them rebilling at full price and off-set your raised costs of maintaining them as a rebilling member.

Regards,

Lee

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Originally Posted by Lee

With the economy in its current condition, what are your folks thoughts on programs that offer trials?

Do you think that by continuing to offer trials during these harsh economic times they are actually maintaining decent income levels or do you think that surfers are actually cancelling their initial trial memberships as prudently as they are full priced recurring memberships?

From tests i have done in the past i really havent noticed any major significance between conversions from trial to full or from regular monthly to regular monthly memberships so im wondering if the sponsors currently offering rediculously low priced trials are actually hurting the industry overall at the current time or whether they are somehow doing us some good.

Your thoughts? Do you think that those still offering low priced trials are still making money and, do you think that offering low priced trials right now is hurting or helping the online porn industry overall?

Regards,

Lee

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When I had a program my experience with low cost trials was that very few converted to full memberships. I think these people are looking to download as much as they can in one or three days and they're never heard from again. I stopped doing them at a certain point because they didn't work for me. I also know that some review sites frown on them.

there are 3 types of people/programs who try low-cost trials:

those who rely on upsells to make their money rather than on subscriptions. these tend to also have popups unless you opt out, and also tend to be PPS programs.

those that offer enough value to keep their members - either huge sites, sites with more frequent updates. sites that give members access to large networks or microniche sites.

those who don't understand the model and either expect their smaller standard site with no network backing it to rebill or those who plan to make their money on upsells but don't know how to make that work.

of the three, the most common ones i run into are the third type - they start a smallish normal niche site like college guys with average content, average models, twice a month to weekly updates and don't understand why they aren't making rebills.

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Originally Posted by AdultB2B

When I had a program my experience with low cost trials was that very few converted to full memberships. I think these people are looking to download as much as they can in one or three days and they're never heard from again. I stopped doing them at a certain point because they didn't work for me. I also know that some review sites frown on them.

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