Question for Paysite owners....

[Machine]

When starting a paysite, is it better to offer a trial membership, or hit the surfer up for the full amount right from the get go?

Any advice on paysites is greatly appreciated.

[Mogul]

Really depends.

If you do trial, make sure your site is good. Otherwise, they will cancel fast.

Usually I find those who pay the full fee (or close to it) up front, stay.

Trials are built for moochers and do not work as good as they did years ago.

So the question really is, is your site good and do you mind people using it for free.

Mogul

[richard]

A v good point brought up at a seminar yesterday:

If your site has little content, and updates infrequently, then a surfer can rape your site on a trial every month...

Rather strangely, Colin Rowntree's wasteland.com charges $5.95 for 7 days, which is less (one a per week basis) than a monthly membership, go figure!

He also said that by using a 7 day trial you get less people feeling rushed than a 3 day trial... ie with a 3 day trial you might think "shit, gotta cancel this in case i forget". With a 7 day trial they can relax, enjoy the site, see the updates going on, etc.

In terms of rebills, i've heard results that indicate that rebills last longer with the $30/month signup price, but signups go down. Also heard of people who have not had signups go down.

Another option might be to go for high initial signup, low recurring, something that i'd be interested to hear results on.

rich.

[basschick]

fuck trials! i run a paysite and noticed that a large amount of the trials were cancelling BEFORE they entered the site. we made a few less sales without the trials, but only a few.

my favorite sponsor has no trial, and the site converts great! just make sure you have a good promo.

also i notice that sponsors that used trials have a lot more people that didn't realized they were being rebilled, so months later there were chargebacks.

[shane94]

And Basschick is right! I have seen people sigh up at my trial and cancel within 2 minutes. Reading this I am now doing away with my trials. Fuck the muchers!

Shane

[Marky]

mogul has a point, but there are many factors between the two. My say is that you should dump the trial, and just make a discount first month offer.

The factors include, how much content, how much updates, and where the traffic comes from, i.e. search engine or tgp. If you're going to use search engine, you will get a larger boost in initial sales, and the surfer are more likely to stay after the trial (less experience). While tgp surfer will cancel right away, unless you give them a kick ass pay site.

Tour design is also a factor, a really nice tour like exploited teens will convert with or without the trial anyways.

hope that helps :)

[RFC]

I think that it depends of content and tours. But I'm always for trial first, cos surfers just love "free" stuff.

[Machine]

Thanks for the tips everyone! I appreciate it.