Paid Account Trial

[vickyblueeyez]

Title:
Paid Account Trial

Area:
paid time

Summary:
Give users the option to have paid time for a certain length of time so see if they like it.

Description:
LJ had a feature where for free, you get two weeks of paid time. I think this would be useful for DW. By having this, users can preview what it's like to have paid accounts and therefore, if they like it, they would be more inclined to buy it. I would like to preview what it's like myself but am hesitant because I do not want to end up wasting money if I don't like it.

Poll #8877 Paid Account Trial

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 87

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
21 (24.1%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
5 (5.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
34 (39.1%)

(I have no opinion)
25 (28.7%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (2.3%)

Comments

[jumpuphigh]

I chose shouldn't be implemented because we have the option to only buy a month for $3 and I just don't think, if someone is seriously considering buying paid time, that is too much. However, whatever Denise and Mark decide is fine with me. I don't really have a pony in this race.

[mc776]

Voting no... might be open to abuse by creating multiple accounts.

Don't have a dog/pony/squirtle in this myself though.

EDIT: Didn't see denise's comment before this...

[pseudomonas]

Maybe it could be generated as a gift thing? Say when you buy a year's paid account for yourself, you get (either free or for an extra $0.50 or whatever token amount) to gift a fortnight's "paid" account to another account [optionally: that's not had such a gift before]?

Just throwing this out as an idea, I am not a business person and have no idea if this would make financial sense.

[erik]

The ticky box I wanted to check would have said something like "Shouldn't be implemented, with changes."

There is already a system in place to "try out" a paid account: buy it for a month. $3 is nothing.

But what denise said about the fact that $3 is still a lot more than free is also true. Especially if you have to go through the whole process of setting up your billing info etc before you can actually spend the $3.

What if there were a system whereby upon buying the first month ever of paid time you received 2 months, and the $3 was fully refundable until the first month was over. This would add a little extra incentive to the idea of starting a paid account (two for one!) and reassure some of the wafflers that if they hate it they can easily send it back.

There would have to be a: a way to flag each account that they'd already received the free trial (to—as people have suggested—keep people from canceling on day 28 again and again), and b: a way to refund people's money, which I assume might already exist.

[ceesoo]

Haha, I think voting might be pretty skewed on this, since people who come to this comm are probably more invested in seeing DW do well and flourish and want to see the DW team rewarded for their efforts.

If it could be done without bugs I'd like people to be able to try a week of paid time though. That seems like long enough to explore some of the features, and if people want to fiddle with things longer, $3 for a month of testing stuff out isn't too much.

LJ made trial accounts their own separate account level, which I wonder if might be the reason it can get kind of buggy...


:|a I think one advantage of doing a trial for DW is that it gives users who have lots of icons on another service a chance to move them over to DW with the importer and play around, set everything up and make it homey, before putting down some money. You could do that after paying the $3, true, but I feel like I'd be more inclined to put money into something I already customized to my liking.

[vickyblueeyez]

Also, I don't want to be mean or start anything but there are a lot of comments that $3 isn't anything. But there are some people who don't have income coming in at all so $3 could be a lot. I just saw the comment as kinda selfish to be honest. That's just me. :/

[alexseanchai]

I think the drawbacks (as Denise said, lots of coding, not necessarily any reward) outweigh the potential of getting paid accounts out of it, unless somebody has hard numbers on how many paid accounts LJ gets out of this feature and those numbers indicate that this feature is worth it.

[keepcalmhyrule]

I like the idea of doing this via the check out process of a one-time only per account purchase of "$0.00" for a week of paid time. That way there isn't a glitch to get the free icon storage like it does on LJ because it goes through the same as any other paid time.

[alexbayleaf]

I don't have a horse in this race, but I'd like to suggest a potential implementation: upon account creation, automatically gift the user with enough DW points to buy one month's paid time.

[cesy]

A one-week trial might well be worth the cost of the paid features, though I'm not sure about the coding time to set up the system.

The other thing we can do is publicise the gift a random user feature - there are also many DW enthusiasts who would happily gift a month's paid time to anyone who's not sure yet.

[aedifica]

My "with changes" isn't really so much "with changes" as it is "I started out neutral and have been mostly persuaded it sounds like a good idea, but not persuaded enough to be comfortable voting a full 'yes' vote."