In the competitive marketplace for xxx site memberships, many sites have begun offering free and low cost "trials" to prospective members. While this may seem like an attractive option on first glance, it is important you understand how these trails really work. As you may have guessed by now, they come with a catch.

The Catch

That catch is almost all of them are for short periods of time such as 3 days and most importantly if not canceled before they end they will usually automatically convert into regular monthly memberships billed at the normal monthly rate of $29.95 or higher until canceled. If you know this ahead of time, they do offer you the opportunity to view the members areas of a site for a couple days before committing to a full months worth of access.

Enough Content?

If a site has a members area with allot of content, most people will not be able to view everything in the 2 to 3 days they have during the trial so they will not want to or bother canceling their membership. On the other hand if a site has a very small members area, trial users are more likely to want to cancel since they can view everything in a day or two.

Conclusion

Those sites that suspect a large number of trial users will want to cancel may try to make it difficult, but not impossible, to find out how to cancel your trial. In most cases, you will need to request such online or over the phone with the payment processing company that handles the credit card processing for the site. Although this could be done internally by the site owners, it is more often handled by a third party. Pay special attention when you sign up on the join form to details on when the trial ends, what it recurs at and how to cancel. Sometimes this information is hidden in the sites terms of service, for which a link is usually found on the join page.