We don't offer trial memberships to our sites and we never will which is probably why I find myself disagreeing with a lot of remarks I see in
this thread (which I'll comment on more later).
One guy blew
TBP's cancellation guidelines totally out of proportion by complaining, "the consumer is being reminded to cancel subscriptions before trial periods have ended (there should be something in every sponsor's TOS forbidding that from appearing on any affiliate site IMO)". While I agree that scammy affiliates who use cancellation of trial membership as their sole marketing ploy are dirty,
like attracts like. When you try to appeal to cheapskates, you attract cheapskates. When all you care about is making sales to anyone and everyone and don't care about the integrity of your product, you attract people who have no integrity and don't respect your product. When you offer affiliates $25 on a $3 sale and expect the surfer to be suckered into your little ploy to screw him for more, expect to get screwed yourself.
Complaining about people using the attractive features of trials (ability to cancel having only paid a few bucks for a few days) is a bald-faced admission of guilt that the only reason trials are offered in the first place is to get people to agree to paying a small amount so you can slam them with a bigger charge within days. Don't offer trial memberships if you don't expect them to be used the way they are set up (or at least don't complain when someone advocates for the consumer by reminding them how trials work). It's almost comical hearing people squawk, "they're taking advantage of
us by not stupidly allowing us to take advantage of
them!"
I think trial memberships are offered mostly by people who devalue their own content; the content is only cheap bait, not something that has a set value to them because the people setting the prices and creating the marketing schemes are not the people in the content. Part of why I refuse to offer trial memberships is that I value our content too much, probably because it's so personal to us BECAUSE WE ARE IN IT. No one is going to get access to four years worth of content, be able to chat with me, and SPY ON ME INSIDE MY HOUSE for $3.95. No fucking way. There's a minimum entrance fee before I even open the door to a stranger watching me while I'm sleeping. You either take a chance and pay the measly $20 or go to some sleazy corporate site who gets you to join for $1 and then hides the cancel page from you.
I also think it's totally disrespectful to members paying full price when sites offer cancellation discounts, or that sleazy pop-up when you try to leave their sites confessing that your content isn't really worth $25 . . . since you didn't fall for that one, join now for $15!! I think that's outrageous and a complete slap in the face to loyal members. I couldn't care less if those guys don't even know it's being done;
my problem is with the shady principal of rewarding people with discounts who devalue your product while making the people who DO value your product PAY MORE. That's just wrong. Again, it's a situation of people so eager to make a sale the only message that they convey is that their product isn't worth a bucket of bullshit (and neither are their customers).
I realize there are a lot of people who employ these methods who actually run decent sites (some that even feature themselves) and if these methods work for them, more power to them. I just think
the tactics themselves send a message that the price of porn is completely arbitrary (not based on real value) and designed solely to TAKE people's money rather than sell them something that has a real set value. It's like someone trying to sell you a stolen watch on the streetcorner -- he didn't pay anything for it in the first place, he just wants to put some money -- ANY money -- into his pocket. He doesn't care about the watch; the only value it has to him is what will get him a quick sale after which he will run away, never to be seen again.
Another observation I have about trials, cancellation discounts, and discounts to folks who are trying to leave a site is based on dealing with customers one-on-one in private shows and phone sex. Anyone who has done any camming or phone knows that when you raise your prices, you may get a slight drop in the number of customers but the quality of the customers go up. Sell camshows for $1 a minute (or worse, give them away for free), and you will get the bossiest, cheapest, quickest, biggest assholes around. Raise your prices to around the $4 a minute mark or higher and you will attract customers looking for quality and willing to pay for it. The shows don't get shorter, they get longer. You have fewer jerks to deal with, and can enjoy doing shows with people who value your time and come to you expecting to pay for it, not haggle with you or ask for refunds or do chargebacks.
When you set your prices you're also setting PERCEPTIONS about what your content is worth. Setting prices too low or begging people to join at discounted rates just communicates to surfers that you're selling worthless shit and that they're entitled to have it for cheap. It smacks of desperation, begging a surfer to join for next-to-nothing, and is an especially bad idea when you're running a personality site. I do not want surfers to feel I am *desperate* to make a sale like I'm some crackwhore on the street selling blowjobs for ten bucks to get her next fix. There is no one more vulnerable to assholes and predators than a desperate sex worker; I have no desire to attract that kind of fan base. It may mean fewer sales, but it also means fewer assholes.
I think the better way to appeal to people looking for a bargain is to create mini-sites; much less content for a much lower price. Tucker and I have been talking about a few different ways to do mini-sites, the main one being limited-time-only / special-edition mini-sites. This way the appeal is that they're getting exclusive content, or content presented in an exclusive fashion, so there's a sense of urgency encouraging them to drop just a few bucks to see and download something that won't be around next season. We got this idea from seasonal candy after seeing certain candybars being marketed in different alluring combos -- it's a totally ridiculous concept, but a good one for selling a lot of stuff at a low price point and possibly attracting new customers who will develop brand loyalty when they might otherwise never notice or try the same old candybar.
Anyway, I totally disagree with the guy saying, "Once a potential customer is shown these tricks they aren't likely to forget them and will have been turned into a lower quality customer forever, whether they keep doing trial joins at the review site (and their bookmarkers must be mostly this type of customer) or go on to other sites elsewhere." First of all, it's not a "trick" when a customer cancels a trial membership -- the "trick" is performed by the paysites offering the trials and COUNTING on customers not to use them as such. Second, I think it's *hilarious* that anyone in this industry would whine about an ethical site like The Best Porn (with absolutely no free content) training people to be "lower quality customers forever" when the majority of people in this biz base their marketing on giving away shitloads of free content which (some might say) trains people not to be customers AT ALL. I'm not complaining about it, just saying that it's a much bigger problem than consumers being reminded that they can exercise the option to cancel trial memberships. Third, it's absolute bullshit to assume that people who bookmark review sites are mostly "lower quality customers". They are just people who are tired of lower quality sites and want to know what they're getting before being suckered by someone's flashy-ass tour into a membership that doesn't provide what they want.
