Ending Free Trials on DogZebra FF

C2
21

There is a lot of inaccurate information being posted here, so I will try to clarify.

Question:
Free Trials: Are these legitimate new users on C2… or are they nefarious scammers stealing your signals?

C2 helps new users understand the platform by walking them through a quick tutorial, which asks them which type of strategies they are interested in (“Forex”, “Futures”, “Stocks,” etc), and then automatically signs them up for popular strategies with free trials. Of course, the conversion rate (percentage of new users who convert to paying subscribers) is low, but it is not zero.

I strongly recommend that Trade Leaders participate in this (by offering free trials of their strategies), because the economics are simple: you’re not “giving away” diamonds or computers to these free-trialers – things with marginal cost to produce. You are giving away information, which does not have a marginal cost to produce. You are marketing. You are showing potential subscribers that you are not a nincompoop. You are receiving their attention – which is the most precious commodity in the world of the Internet. Sure, only 1% or 2% will convert to paying subscribers, but you received those 1% conversions for free, without paying for any marketing. (And no, most of these subscribers are not trading you “live” with real brokerage accounts and thereby sucking up liquidity for your trades; think about it – what kind of knucklehead would follow real-money trades for a strategy that they were randomly assigned to, and about which they initially know nothing?!)

So, to summarize: wmwmw, I must politely disagree with your theory. These “free trialers” are not long-time C2 users who adopt new personas, again and again, and try to scam you into giving away trials. (And incidentally, in the For What It’s Worth Department, we have software methods to prevent any sort of “gaming” of free trials by long-time users, as you fear.)

But look, if you disagree with me, and think that you don’t want to receive the attention of potential new subscribers for free – and you don’t want that 1% or 2% conversions rate from trial to payment – that’s fine, too. It’s up to you. Just turn off free trials to your strategy. Then you can control who sees your trades, and you alone will be responsible for attracting interest from new members of the site.

1 Like
22

1.Are you saying all those who registered with false credit card information are new comers? Why new comers coming to C2 all give false credit card information,while in other places new comers just don’t do this?
2. Are you saying 90% of free trial members are new comers? If so, you need to explain the math I mentioned above.

If C2 consistently get 90% new comers, C2 will have trillion of trillion members by now.

Whatever,the few subscribers developers get, the few developers will stay at C2.
Making developer unhappy do not help C2.

In my watch list, there are quite a few strategies that are pretty good by past C2 standard,(3-4 consecutive months good performance )but now have no or very few subscribers. When I saw this, I know it is now too difficult to get subscribers, which almost eliminate my hope to stay at C2…

23

wmwmw - first, let me say that I am glad you are a C2 member, and I hope you remain here and can be happy.

I don’t want this to turn into a public argument on the forums. I will respond to you here directly, and briefly, to try to address your specific points, but then I’m going to request we take any further discussions offline to email.

  1. I don’t see massive numbers of “false credit cards.” I really have no idea what you are referring to. Please email me (not a public post, please) where you see these massive numbers of “false credit cards.” Include a screen shot. Perhaps I misunderstand what you mean, because I’ve looked at your account and I don’t see anything related to false credit cards.

  2. You asked me to comment on your math. I don’t understand it and so I will defer commenting.

To give you some comfort: I am 100% certain that your fear – that free trialers are composed almost entirely of long-time users who sign up repeatedly under different accounts – is not true. These are, by and large, new users to the platform.

If this statement is not sufficient to comfort you, and if my explanation in a previous message, about how the free-trial system works, does not reassure you, then of course you can choose not to participate in the program by not offering free trials to your strategy.

For now, I will close this public thread, but please feel free to address any other questions or concerns to me privately at help@collective2.com. I’ll try my best to answer quickly.

1 Like