I thought offering free trials is impossible if you're a poor, but I was wrong

2 pointsxucian29d ago2 comments

i finally embraced free trials

the key is: have a shared communal amount of credits, and it's first come, first served. calculate how much you can afford at max per day and that's it

i got burned by free trials in 2023 when people automated account creation to abuse the system, so i just dumped them altogether, but i think this variation is the sweet spot. thoughts?

it's way harder to implement in an existing system than when you're just getting started, so i recommend everyone consider this when building their next projects, especially if you bootstrap and probably can't afford free trials for everyone

the app in question is a midjourney-like image/video generator: maginary.ai

2 comments

pavel_lishin29d ago

> the key is: have a shared communal amount of credits, and it's first come, first served. calculate how much you can afford at max per day and that's it

Wouldn't this very likely mean that a lot of your users hit a wall immediately, without being able to use any credits?

xucianOP29d ago

yes, that's the point, but you will rise the ceiling the more paying users you get. as opposed to having to deal with per-user limits, you have a global limit you fully control

for example, i have 900 users, 7% paying, but it's 3-6 new users per day, it's manageable at 5 credits per user per day (non-renewable), and 20 communal (so in theory 4 users)

when i grow, i just raise the communal credits from 20 to, let's say 100, so 5x more free happy users per day. i think it's beautiful in its simplicity and flexibility

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