[programminggeek]

What is really funny is when you think about it, we all buy things without trying them every single day. We make assumptions that a product will work or that it can be replaced/refunded when it doesn't.

Surprisingly, in the online world we think everything is different and that nobody buys things without a free trial of some kind, but over and over again I see products and services that sell without a free trial.

I think it's doing early stage products a disservice to assume you have to have a free trial to make money. When you are proving out if a product will sell, you need to know if people will pay you money for it, not if they are casually interested in trying it.

If it don't make dollars, it don't make sense.

[hagbardgroup]

The internet is similar to mail order but faster with a lot of tricky details (in the same way that mail and print have tons of tricky details). People don't change all that much.

'Free' gets you a lot of tire-kickers automatically, whereas a guarantee pre-qualifies the customers to the people who can afford to float you some cash. If they're a tire kicker, at least they're not a totally broke / budgetless tire kicker.

There are other free sweeteners that you can offer that aren't a free trial.