Trial to Full or Regular to Premium?

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ab305

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Jul 21, 2009
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So i'm working on a membership site and it will have a free limited access area where people can purchase for the full access, to all the videos/articles/forums/etc

I'm wondering if anyone has any insight in the buying psychology or has just tested which one would yields better results.

1. A person signing up to the "free" site, logging in and getting some material but the majority of it will need "premium/vip" access

or

2. A person signing up to a site as a free trial, then viewing content and the majority of it is only available with full membership.

P.S. yes I will test both, but i'm just curious about opening a discussion about this
 


Free Trial makes it clear that it will not last forever and that you want monies.

Therefore I think signups would be less, far less.

Lots of sites, go with route 1 and I think there is a good reason.
 
Yeah good point, cause I was thinking if its a REALLY nice site, with exclusive video content.. etc.. the free trial might scare people away, just thinking it will be too much, which trying it out, but thats just in my mind, i dont know if I think like the masses, lol
 
I've been contemplating how to handle a similar model.

What I was thinking is put up a few low res/grade videos hosted on say youtube or vimeo that you could view without ever signing up. Then try and upsell to a full membership with high quality videos and content.

Or in a similar model charge per video, and even create bundles.
 
you could do a "free-trial" if they fill out any 4 of these offers from an offer wall that you have.
 
A lot of it also depends on the audience and product.

In the web hosting business I had no luck with free trials because people expected to pay for infrastructure, so the free trials only attracted bad leads, people pulling scams, etc.

Discounts, free upgrades, etc. worked better.
 
Have done my fair share of continuity and premium based sites. You'll notice for most niches the free or limited trials give you boat loads of tire-kickers with shitty conversions to premium, and tends to devalue your offer.

The cheap asses that get the trial then upgrade usually don't stick around past 3 months either so be prepared to really over deliver or not retain customers for long (not a bad thing if you plan it that way in volume perhaps).

EDIT: Basically repeated/reinforced the above
 
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