Tips and Tricks for Making Money with Interviews

A: A lot shorter than you think it needs to be (and by the way, it probably shouldn’t be free, either).

The question of free or low cost trial will be the subject of another post, so for now let’s just discuss the length of the trial. It’s also right up there with the most common question, right behind, “What should I give away to build my list?”

Emile and I haven’t done as much testing in this area as we have with pricing (we’re in the middle of a pretty big “trial-length” test right now on one of our sites). But I’ve talked to a lot of membership site owners about this subject. I’ve also talked to quite a few of our current members and members who canceled during the trial.

Most people think they need to offer a one month / 30 days so that the trial user has time to really dig into the content and determine if it’s right for them. However the user experience is usually much different.

So here’s the shocking truth: nearly all of the members of our membership sites I’ve talked to that canceled during the trial made the decision to do so… during their first visit behind the membership wall and that usually means within 30 minutes of becoming a trial member.

It makes sense though doesn’t it? As much as we’d like to believe that new members will investigate every nook and cranny of our content filled awesomeness, it is their initial first impression (that happens within minutes) that dictates whether they are going to stay on as members or cancel before the trial period ends.

For the vast majority of premium content site owners, a one-day trial will be more than enough time for them to decide.

Now, that said, right away I’d argue that our online trading site is one of those exceptions. We offer trial members access to the most current four audio interviews. These run about 35-40 minutes each and it’s not realistic to think that new members will sit down and listen to all four in one day. Even a few days may be pushing it. So we run a $1 trial that lasts seven days. On the 8th day, they are charged the full-month fee and become regular members.

Site owners who have longer-form content will probably need to give their trial members more time to decide.

But there is another problem with 30-day trials. Aside from being totally unnecessary based on the above, longer trials reduce the urgency a new member has to check out the site. When a new member has a month to evaluate the site, they may come in very briefly to see what’s going on, but often decides that they’ll “really check it out thoroughly tomorrow.” Tomorrow becomes the next day, then next week, and before you know it, thirty days has come and gone.

So they say to themselves, “Well self, I didn’t have time to check out that site. So I think I’ll cancel for now and I’ll just sign up again later when I do have time.” There goes your trial member.

Making your trial shorter forces your new member to go in, consume your great content (it IS great, right?) and maybe even take some action based on what they’ve learned. The bottom line is that if they don’t take action based on their membership, you probably aren’t going to keep them on board past the trial.

If you’re offering a long trial right now, consider shortening it greatly and continue to do so until you see conversions going down. You’ll find a sweet spot in there somewhere that is long enough to give your new members time to truly evaluate your content, but not so long that they put it off until another time.

I’d love your thoughts on the subject!

creating content, membership pricing, selling content online free trial, how long should a free trial be?