recently i’ve come across sites that have either changed their recurring trials to non recurring or have added a non recurring trial but continue to offer full month recurring memberships. these sites do this on the affiliate links, which i personally think sucks.
can you think of any reason why a site would offer a non recurring trial except to cut out the affiliates when satisfied members rejoin for a recurring membership after the ccbill cookie has expired?
Re: non-recurring trials 
Perhaps too many surfers have been burned and the site is question has done some testing and has found that non-recurring trials sell. Surfers must know by now that if they buy a $3.95 trial that they generally get ripped when the site rebills at $10 or more than the monthly rate. If I could get into a site for $3.95 with no fear of any rebilling, I’d be game.
Let’s face it, if a site can sell 1000 $3.95 trials, that’s almost $4k in the sponsor’s pocket, which is better than nothing. And if the surfer likes the site, they can simply rejoin at the lower monthly rate rather than to inflated trial rebilling price.
Of course if they sell 1000 trails referred by webmasters they could be paying out $30K with little hope of recuperating some of their money through rebills.
Don’t know really, just throwing some ideas out there.
Michael
Re: non-recurring trials
Surfers and the program benefit from a non recurring trial, the affiliate seems to be left out in the cold on this one. I wouldn’t promote a site that had a non recurring trial.
Re: non-recurring trials
most of the trials like this are higher than $4. and the thing is that after doing extensive testing not only of my own stuff but with many friends and clients, a reasonably priced monthly price sells 75% or 80% as many memberships as a trial - 90% in the case of higher priced trials or microniche sites.
so while 1000 trials at $4.95 is a total of $4950 before affiliates or processing, 700 sales (only 70% of the amount of trials) at $25 each is $17,500. and if a site does dismally, removes their trials and sells only 50% the number of full months they do of trials, they’ll still make $12,500 selling 500 $25-per-month memberships - that’s a lot better than $4950.
and like Squirt, i also wouldn’t promote a site with a non-recurring trial. a lot of webmasters wouldn’t. and they shouldn’t. they’re left out. if a site wants to offer a non recurring, how about at least a full month, for goodness sake - and i’d prefer it was a 3 month.
Re: non-recurring trials
We added a 5 day/ $20 trial that rebills to $25 and it really does well. I am sure if we made it a non recur, it would do well also. The surfers that take it are looking for cheap porn and have no intention of rebilling, but they do as they like the content. It’s at 43% right now. So, I would assume that a program that offers a non recur $20 / 5 day trial is also doing well with it. Probably better than we are as they don’t have to pay affiliates on rebills/
There is actually one really good site that I wouldn’t market under revshare now as they have a 5 day non recurring trial and convert horrible anyways on my affiliate traffic.
Re: non-recurring trials
I offer a non-recurring trial of £10 for 10 days (I also offer other non recurring trials and a monthly recurring membership)
I must say my £10 trial sells best with almost half of these people coming back on a regular base and paying me £10 again and again …
Most of my sales are direct sales - not through affiliates - unless affiliates start to sell hundreds a month for me - it is simply not worth it for me to change my billing to suit affiliates. The costs are just too high …
Lets say a 50% payout on £10 + the cc-processor fee: that would give me about £3.50 per sale … not good economics …
Some “potential” affiliates I find are too demanding - they want pictures in this and that way - they do not want you to have a links page - you are not allowed to have a newsletter - etc, etc, etc — and what happens next? You end up on page 47 on a blog. They have all these demands because “they OWN the surfer for - like - forever …” - but as a sponsor you have NO control over where you end up - honestly can a sponsor say: “I do not want MY pictures next to the pictures of that other site”? NO: not really … and that for ending up with £3.50 per sale.
Re: non-recurring trials
[QUOTE=fetishlad;19050]
Lets say a 50% payout on £10 + the cc-processor fee: that would give me about £3.50 per sale … not good economics …[/QUOTE]
Actually it’s great economics as you have £3.50 more then you would have without the affiliate. 
I haven’t ever run into a productive affiliate that was to demanding as they know what works best for their site and traffic. I’ve had non productive affiliates try and bog me down with doing their job for them and in time you learn how to weed those guys out.
Re: non-recurring trials
I think my website is too niche for affiliates.
Most of my traffic (and sales) comes through links from fetish sex clubs and bars, fetish sex shops and plain old google with specific words …
you know - it is not the end of the world for me … I make a very good living, I enjoy what I do and I seem to make people happy …
Re: non-recurring trials
I know where you’re coming from.
Some affiliates are afraid of my sleepingmen.com site as the niche is very specific and shot in nightvision, however the type in traffic from Google is amazing.
For some reason the trend now is picture perfect everything. You goto some of these hub sites and you can’t tell one studio from another as the lighting and skin tone is always the same.
Non recurring trials are the best thing for the consumer, unfortunately everyone else involved loses money.
[QUOTE=fetishlad;19054]I think my website is too niche for affiliates.
Most of my traffic (and sales) comes through links from fetish sex clubs and bars, fetish sex shops and plain old google with specific words …
you know - it is not the end of the world for me … I make a very good living, I enjoy what I do and I seem to make people happy …[/QUOTE]
Re: non-recurring trials
[QUOTE=Squirt;19069]
Non recurring trials are the best thing for the consumer, unfortunately everyone else involved loses money.[/QUOTE]
We actually have a lot of non recurring members that are really upset right now. We lost about 150 recurring members when Maestro decided not to allow rebills. Some have actually gone out and gotten a credit card just so they can now be on a rebilling membership option.
This non rebill system is very hard on a lot of members that actually want to rebill. Almost every day a few members get blocked by entering the un and pw wrong too many times, only to find out the membership has expired.
So, for some consumers, I would say it is not a good thing.
But, for a program that actively recruits affiliates, I would say a non recurring trial (especially if it’s a good site) is just plain wrong to the affiliates.
Re: non-recurring trials
the problem promoting sites with non-recurring option is, if you make non-recurring sales, when finish the non-recurring membership and the member like the site and rejoin again you not get the sale. I think its because a lot of paysites have also the non-recurring option, they get sales from expired members without pay to the affiliates. 
I don’t know how many surfers not buy a membership if not find the non-recurring option. A lot of people have very bad experiences with recurring memberships.
Re: non-recurring trials
If a member finds a site and is NOT convinced by an affiliate to take a recurring membership - then the affiliate is responsible for that.
If the member after the trial decides to take out another membership (trial or recurring) then the site itself convinced the member and therefore should get the credit.
Affiliates think they “own” the surfer indefinite - but in this case that is not true - anyway - they “own” a surfer for as long as cookies are valid anyway …
Re: non-recurring trials
i’ve noticed you don’t know much about working as an affiliate. affiliates very very VERY rarely give surfers tons of info about the site or the advantages of which option to buy. we talk about the niche, or even more often in a gallery situation, we show them a few pics or 1 minute of video and tell them that they can see the models inside the site.
i work with several large review sites, and i explain in the reviews twice - once in the body and once in the summary - when sites have limited trials that don’t even allow a member to see one full movie, or that ONLY allow members to see one full movie. but guess what - surfers join the low cost trial anyway. seeing a $1 or $2.95 option just gets some of them all excited, and others don’t “get it”.
in most situations, it’s the site itself that dictates which membership the surfers are going to buy. it doesn’t matter if i expect on my pages that the $24.95 membership is truly the best deal and why if the site i send the traffic to screams about how they offer a $1 for thousands of videos. also if a ccbill page dropdown uses a low cost trial that shows on the page, some guys don’t even realize it’s a dropdown and assume it’s their only choice.
[quote=fetishlad;19084]If a member finds a site and is NOT convinced by an affiliate to take a recurring membership - then the affiliate is responsible for that.
If the member after the trial decides to take out another membership (trial or recurring) then the site itself convinced the member and therefore should get the credit.
Affiliates think they “own” the surfer indefinite - but in this case that is not true - anyway - they “own” a surfer for as long as cookies are valid anyway …[/quote]
Re: non-recurring trials
I am NOT an affiliate…
Re: non-recurring trials
true, but without knowing how it works, you did say:
[quote=fetishlad;19084]If a member finds a site and is NOT convinced by an affiliate to take a recurring membership - then the affiliate is responsible for that.
If the member after the trial decides to take out another membership (trial or recurring) then the site itself convinced the member and therefore should get the credit.
Affiliates think they “own” the surfer indefinite - but in this case that is not true - anyway - they “own” a surfer for as long as cookies are valid anyway …[/quote]
look at all the people on amazon who buy a 1/10 of a carat diamond ring, then feel ripped off that the diamond is small. when people think they have a deal, seems like all sense goes out the window. affiliates can’t keep that from happening.
people join sites after reading reviews that say a site is small, the content isn’t downloadable and the tour is extremely misleading - then write to the review site owners to complain about the very things the review said. i wrote a review of a site with 24 non-exclusive niche pic sets and nothing else. the review said what was in the site very frankly several times - the pics were old, could be seen in many other sites in the same niche that also offered videos. yet even having read this, people joined.
btw, many paysite owners have never been affiliates, but that doesn’t keep them from figuring out how affiliates send traffic and what the site can do to help the affiliates make the paysite owner the most money.
Re: non-recurring trials
true, but without knowing how it works, you did say:
[quote=fetishlad;19084]If a member finds a site and is NOT convinced by an affiliate to take a recurring membership - then the affiliate is responsible for that.
If the member after the trial decides to take out another membership (trial or recurring) then the site itself convinced the member and therefore should get the credit.
Affiliates think they “own” the surfer indefinite - but in this case that is not true - anyway - they “own” a surfer for as long as cookies are valid anyway …[/quote]
look at all the people on amazon who buy a 1/10 of a carat diamond ring, then post angrily that they feel ripped off that the diamond is small - even though the title of the item included “.10 carat” in it AND amazon offers a pic of how the earing will look on the average ear. when people think they have a deal, seems like all sense goes out the window. affiliates can’t keep that from happening.
people join sites after reading reviews that say a site is small, the content isn’t downloadable and the tour is extremely misleading - then write to the review site owners to complain about the very things the review said. i wrote a review of a site with 24 non-exclusive niche pic sets and nothing else. the review said what was in the site very frankly several times - the pics were old, could be seen in many other sites in the same niche that also offered videos. yet even having read this, people joined.
btw, many paysite owners have never been affiliates, but that doesn’t keep them from figuring out how affiliates send traffic and what the site can do to help the affiliates make the paysite owner the most money.
Re: non-recurring trials
I actually DO know how affiliates work.
I know that there are some really good ones (niche dedicated blogs do well, some reviewers too) and some really bad ones …( like with the dis-honest reviews - that actually ALSO looks bad on the membership site owner)
But I stick with my statement on non-recurring memberships.
Affiliates do not own a surfer forever. A “sponsor” website also runs itself - also advertises itself - also tries to make money itself. So they have the right to show a surfer that their site is worth coming back. Well- unless you as an affilate disagree with that and want to diktat (= Russian for dictate) what can and can not be done in a members area …
If every sponsor site owner only relied on affiliates for income then a lot of them would not have the money to do more shoots …
Nor should affiliates tell a sponsor how to run its business - on the “other” board - sponsors were hounded because; “how dare they?” sponsors would have a link page somewhere on their site (and no - not on the tour pages) - OR a sponsor would have a mailing list for updates - now what good is paying commission to an affiliate if they don’t use the update and your first picture can be found on page 59 of a blog???
Or a link to VOD - is another no-no - however sponsors that film - they can do whatever they want and however they want it with their material … even though affiliates are riddled with many links to about every VOD program going - by the way: the sponsors content at that affiliate site has to compete with that too. example - sponsors pictures DO appear next to VOD ads in blogs - the blog has 1 subject (1 shoot) for that picture and the VOD ad offers 1,000s of clips.
Or how well does it work to be on one of those ftp (or whatever they are called) with about 600 pictures on 1 page and 1 of these pictures is yours?
Some affiliates spend about 30 seconds putting a couple of pictures (of a particular sponsor) on a crappy page … pages that look unprofessional - so it also looks bad onthe sponsor.
Oh and sponsors have to be content with review sites doing similar sites and rating the other better …
Oh and then there are affiliates that insist on hosted galleries - and embedded video clips - so a sponsor has to make these galleries and has to host the videos on its on server … and all the affiliate then does is put 1 or 2 lines of html on a page (and I bet that is also automated nowadays) - and they won’t even have to pay for the bandwidth …
So all I am saying - some affiliates have a disproportionate view on how much a sponsor owes them …
By the way - I am not saying all affiliates are bad - but affiliates are a middleman (just to be posh: intermediate) - and sometimes forget that they never produced anything - so they don’t appreciate how sponsors need to pay for all that.
On the other hand there are also affiliates that do a very good job and deserve every penny .
But, I am also playing a little bit of devils advocate now … just to get this interesting thread to be more interesting.
Re: non-recurring trials
in my book, an affiliate does own a surfer till the affiliate is paid fairly for that surfer. after all, i could get paid up to $40 for each member i refer and i do this for a living, so i try to send traffic only to programs that are fair and treat their affiliates as the traffic partners that they are.
Re: non-recurring trials
On the other side, 30 days ago, we started offering a non-recurring standard membership with an additional cost attached ($34.95) and it is selling really really well. Our cancelations have gone way down and revenue has increased. This plays the same for the affiliate. If a surfer joins at the standard rate and then rejoins 1 year later, the affiliate will not get the credit for the sale. But if a surfer is going to join and then cancel before they even hit the member’s area (as many do) then why not offer them the option to avoid canceling and make the one time payment. This actually puts more money in the affiliates pocket. This is done to increase revenue and make the sale easier for surfers to buy since I never find surfers that say “Yes I would prefer to have to cancel” We have members that rejoin every other month, NEVER getting the loyalty discount (which makes zero sense to me).
We will continue to run this experiment for 60 days to see how it plays out.
I can’t follow the logic, since I would like to believe that a member would come back to us in the future simply because they remembered the site, but many members will return via a different affiliate link. Not all of them by any means, but a pretty good number of them.
Re: non-recurring trials
oh, don’t get me wrong - i can live with a non-recurring full month, and they do sell better, which can make up for it not recurring. it’s a non-recurring revshare trial that annoys me. alex, years ago i promoted a site that offered a 1.95 trial for a while. it converted my traffic at 1:13, which meant that for most sales i was being paid under a buck each. i can live with $12 if the site sells well and some of the members do rebill.
what started this thread is that i’m seeing long term programs adding a non-recurring trial of under $10 where most of their affiliates had been splitting $24.95 or $29.95 memberships with them, and they added those trials without telling affiliates. of course, if a program i’m just thinking of signing up for has a $4.95 non recurring trial, it doesn’t annoy me - i just don’t send them any traffic
[quote=AlexManifestMan;19098]On the other side, 30 days ago, we started offering a non-recurring standard membership with an additional cost attached ($34.95) and it is selling really really well. Our cancelations have gone way down and revenue has increased. This plays the same for the affiliate. If a surfer joins at the standard rate and then rejoins 1 year later, the affiliate will not get the credit for the sale. But if a surfer is going to join and then cancel before they even hit the member’s area (as many do) then why not offer them the option to avoid canceling and make the one time payment. This actually puts more money in the affiliates pocket. This is done to increase revenue and make the sale easier for surfers to buy since I never find surfers that say “Yes I would prefer to have to cancel” We have members that rejoin every other month, NEVER getting the loyalty discount (which makes zero sense to me).
We will continue to run this experiment for 60 days to see how it plays out.
I can’t follow the logic, since I would like to believe that a member would come back to us in the future simply because they remembered the site, but many members will return via a different affiliate link. Not all of them by any means, but a pretty good number of them.[/quote]