Trial Memberships?

[maxpower]

I was wondering what everyone thinks about offering cheap trial memberships like 2.95 for 3 days or 6.96 for 7 days? I have observed that even the allegedly best sites “corbinfisher.com “ at recurring memberships don’t really offer that option anymore. Is this whole cheap trial thing a keen to the check fiasco in that people are just taking advantage of it to get what they want and then move on? I really am thinking about removing my trials all together and have a pricing structure similar to corbin’s and many others

[XXXWriterDude]

As a consumer, I think they are a good idea to give someone a really good idea of what they will find on your site and help them choose whether to buy a full membership. Hookup sites like Manhunt and Sex4HotMen do well with those, from what I hear. Anyone else care to weigh in?

[maxpower]

I am beginning to believe to many people really don’t want to be real members they just want to get off fast and cheap. The only reason to offer trials it to keep members, not have a revolving door. If it was true that all people need to do was see how good your site is and they would become members other webmasters would be offering free or .99$ 3 day trials, but this is not the case they are doing the opposite, and offering really high trials like 19.95 for 7 days and monthly memberships at around 24.95. I think a few years ago most webmasters did offer these cheap trials but now days things have really changed, hell even badpuppy dose not offer a cheap 3 or 7 day trial in comparison to their monthly rate. I just wounded if people keep being so fickle how long before this will really begin to effect the size and quality of the sites they can join. :vanish:

[Marc]

I had a site for a small while and I offered a trial. I think 80% of the people who signed up for the trial cancelled right after signing up.
And I had a lot of content too, for a very small price, but they just went inpo cancelled right away, and downloaded everything.

Today, if I was just promoting it myself I wouldnt offer a trial, Id just offer the monthly membership.

If you have affiliates then I think you have to offer a trial because the affiliates want to see there making some kind of money, even if its just a few bucks.

[maxpower]

Ya I think so too, it really dose not matter how much you offer the trial members 80% plan to cancel ASAP even before they join. I would really rather have 1 real member than 5 trial members any day. Hell I look to see what Lee’s condom charges but without filling out a forum first he dose not display it, but I am willing to bet he dose not have a cheap trial as well. For allot of the same reasons. Seriously if this kind of thinking keeps up with members their are going to be allot more really small sites, with only some ABEN feeds and a few pics and videos on the side.

[collegeboyslive]

I had asked Lisa at badpuppy about trial memberships when we wer going to try it a while back, she said they had tried ti but found that people would come in on a tril, suck as much as they possibly could down to a hard drive then cancel. so they basically got more bandwith usage and less membership money from them.

[maxpower]

I had asked Lisa at badpuppy about trial memberships when we wer going to try it a while back, she said they had tried ti but found that people would come in on a tril, suck as much as they possibly could down to a hard drive then cancel. so they basically got more bandwith usage and less membership money from them.

Ya that is my thinking as well, to bad I had to find out that on my own Now I am thinking about making a really cheap, really small site for the dead beats that will not allow any downloads at all. I will see I guess how that goes, anyone tried making a similarly small site?

[maxpower]

God sometimes I wish I had a twin, all this work is to much for just one person. :hmmph:

[Lee]

Ya I think so too, it really dose not matter how much you offer the trial members 80% plan to cancel ASAP even before they join. I would really rather have 1 real member than 5 trial members any day. Hell I look to see what Lee’s condom charges but without filling out a forum first he dose not display it, but I am willing to bet he dose not have a cheap trial as well. For allot of the same reasons. Seriously if this kind of thinking keeps up with members their are going to be allot more really small sites, with only some ABEN feeds and a few pics and videos on the side.

We have 2 price points on Condom Cash, one month at $29.95 which the affiliate makes 50% of (unless we are running a promotion like this months) or, $89.95 for 3 months access and again, the affiliate makes 50% of that.

Im not a big fan of trials for the reason already stated, surfer join for $2.95 or whatever and immediately cancel but rip all of the content from inside the site.

Regards,

Lee

[basschick]

sites with truly excellent member areas often do okay with trials. by truly excellent, i mean sites that update regularly and have plenty of content in their niche. okay means 30 - 35% conversion. i haven't seen trials do over 40% conversion in quite a while except on good microniche sites.

i've found regular easy-to-find updates are key to converting trials. plugins do not help with trial to monthly conversion as most of your members have joined other sites before and have seen the same content in the same pages with the same logos.

one other way that trials can work well is if you have limited trials with an automatic upsell to full membership. naughtyamerica was doing 51% trial to membership for us using a limited trial.

[maxpower]

sites with truly excellent member areas often do okay with trials. by truly excellent, i mean sites that update regularly and have plenty of content in their niche. okay means 30 - 35% conversion. i haven't seen trials do over 40% conversion in quite a while except on good microniche sites.

i've found regular easy-to-find updates are key to converting trials. plugins do not help with trial to monthly conversion as most of your members have joined other sites before and have seen the same content in the same pages with the same logos.

one other way that trials can work well is if you have limited trials with an automatic upsell to full membership. naughtyamerica was doing 51% trial to membership for us using a limited trial.

Ya my trial was doing about 30% I jumped it up to 14.95 for 7 days and started promotion my monthly membership of 24.95 more prominently. I will give it a week and see how this works, if these cheap trials are going to have such a big over turn I think I am going to make a new site to take advantage of that.

[basschick]

our reps at epoch and ccbill tell me those more expensive trials lead to chargebacks, so you might wanna watch out for that. we did the most sales with the $1.95 and $2.95 prices - this did especially well with search engine traffic.

but higher priced trials - anything over $4.95 - sold less than 5% more than full month memberships for us so we made a lot more money dropping the trials.

[maxpower]

our reps at epoch and ccbill tell me those more expensive trials lead to chargebacks, so you might wanna watch out for that. we did the most sales with the $1.95 and $2.95 prices - this did especially well with search engine traffic.

but higher priced trials - anything over $4.95 - sold less than 5% more than full month memberships for us so we made a lot more money dropping the trials.

I have only had like 4 chargebacks that were not checks, and I think as I remember they said something about credit card fraud was the problem with all of that, so I am sure I will be able to spot any new problems. What do you think about me totally drooping my 14.95 7 trial and offering only 2 options, 19.95 recurring, and 29.95 non recurring instead?

[basschick]

i don't know your site, but i would think $24.95 for a recurring month and $54.95 for 3 months would be good. and maybe $29.95 for non recurring if you want to offer a 1 month non recurring.

[maxpower]

i don't know your site, but i would think $24.95 for a recurring month and $54.95 for 3 months would be good. and maybe $29.95 for non recurring if you want to offer a 1 month non recurring.

Well what you listed is my current price structure, Exp. the 7 day pass that is, I think I might experiment a bit with it over the next few weeks, and just see what happens Thax.