So, you’ve created a load of amazing content and you’re doing your best to promote your page – but all the juiciest images and videos you’ve shot are hidden behind that paywall.
How do you give people a little taster, to entice them to sign up for more?
That’s where OnlyFans free trials come in.
Jump to:
What is an OnlyFans free trial?
A free trial on OnlyFans is a promotion run by a content creator to give free access for a period of time – usually a week or even a month.
There are no free trials offered by OnlyFans as a company – they leave everything in the hands of the creators.
You can create a broad promotion to allow everyone free access for a set amount of time, or click on individual users’ profiles to give them an exclusive trial.
By giving out free trials, you give users a chance to enjoy your Onlyfans free, which includes your images and video to see if they want to go on and ultimately subscribe for a monthly fee.
How do you offer a free trial?
There are two ways to offer a free OnlyFans trial depending on whether it’s a blanket offer for everyone, or a specific offer for a user.
If it’s for everyone, head to your profile settings and choose the ‘Start a Profile Promotion Campaign’ option. You can then set a discount – choose 100% for a free trial. If you want to offer a discounted amount you can do so instead, but be aware that any discount below 100% will always be for one month. For a free trial, you can choose between 1 and 30 days.
If it’s an individual user that you want to offer a trial to, just click on the three dots on their profile and you’ll find the option to offer them an individual discount.
Be aware that free trials on OnlyFans don’t work in the same way as many other websites – once the trial ends, they won’t be automatically subscribed unless they cancel. Instead their subscription will just end and they’ll need to manually re-subscribe.
Things to watch out for
When setting up your free trials, make sure not to give it to everyone. It can be tempting to try and capture as many free trials as possible, but not everyone needs a trial to sign up.
Use it more sparingly and as a tool when you’re promoting yourself elsewhere. The individual promotions in particular are a great tool if you’re chatting to someone elsewhere on the internet – if you think they might be interested, treat them to a personalized trial.
For broader offers, you can set a limit on the number of users getting free access too.
The most important thing is that you offer value that makes the user want to keep subscribing. If you give away all your content for a month but then only add a couple of new pictures or videos, they’re hardly going to want to keep paying.
Keep adding fresh content throughout the trial, and talk about what content you’re going to add once their trial ends. This is the way to keep them hooked.
What are the risks of OnlyFans free trials?
There are some risks involved when setting up an OnlyFans free trial for subscribers, and for that reason some creators don’t think it’s worth trying.
The first of which is content theft – the potential for users to sign up to your free trial just to screenshot all of your content and then keep it for them to enjoy later, or even worse, upload elsewhere so that lots of people can take advantage of the ill-gotten imagery.
IP infringement is a relatively serious issue on OnlyFans but having a paid subscription barrier does help. For someone to steal your content, they need to be willing to pay for at least one month of access to get to it in the first place.
Not so with a free trial, where people can gain access to your content at no charge to themselves and then just take your content.
If they do intend to use it for personal use, there’s not much you can do. If they upload it elsewhere you will be able to issue a notice to have it taken down, but that relies on you being made aware of the content theft too. You can’t be all over the internet.
Unfortunately, some people say that content thieves tend to be on the lookout for free trials and so when you offer a trial, you’re sending out the flares to attract them. Make sure you have a notice on your profile telling people that the content is not to be downloaded and that you will issue action if the content is found elsewhere. But beyond that, you just need to hope that you don’t get thieves.
You are more likely to get freeloaders – people who sign up to the trial with zero intention whatsoever of ever paying for a subscription. And they are the other big risk.
If you offer a free trial, a significant portion might be people who are taking advantage and don’t want to pay, and you can waste a lot of time and energy trying to win them over in a futile attempt. A free trial means they get what they want, and then get out before they pay.
But if you can’t tell the freeloaders from the good guys, you could be replying to the wrong messages or putting in effort to please commenters when they’re never going to be worth a cent to you.
Ultimately you need to decide whether you think a free trial is a risk worth taking, because it won’t always be.
Alternatives to an OnlyFans free trial
If you want to gain new subscribers but don’t like the idea of a free trial, there are a couple of alternative options available.
Free OnlyFans profile
A lot of people choose to have a second OnlyFans profile that is always-free, instead of a free trial for their main account.
The purpose of a free second profile is to serve as a teaser. It lets fans subscribe without paying, but then only see the content you’re willing to give away for free. It might be less risqué content, or the same content you’ve got on your paid-for profile, but censored so that it doesn’t give everything away.
This is a more long-term solution, and may be suitable if you’re willing to put in the effort to maintain two accounts. Over time you can work a slow build, teasing fans with enough free content that you finally convince them to pay for the uncensored content on your main page.
But you do have to work twice as hard, which means it’s not something that’s suitable for everyone. If you set up a free profile but neglect to do much with it, then you’re actually doing more harm than good. People won’t care about your content and will assume that you don’t post much paid-for content either, so won’t be interested in paying a subscription fee.
Posting adult content on suitable third-party sites
If you’re happy to give away some of your more adult content but don’t want to run the risk of a trial, take control by posting it yourself elsewhere on the internet, with a link to where people can find more of it – AKA your paid-for OnlyFans page.
With this one, you are giving away the good stuff for free. But you are in control – you’re the one who decides which photos or videos to give up, how explicit you want them to be, and when they get taken down.
You just need to be careful about which sites you use too. Some people will use live streaming sites, and create some adult streams with the hope of enticing people to pay for all-access content on OnlyFans.
Others will use NSFW subreddits on Reddit. These are a great option since they have a tailored niche audience already, provided you’re posting in the right subreddits. And a lot of people see success on Reddit when they use it to promote their OnlyFans page.
Again, there are pros and cons, but by taking control and taking your content to the people, you’re less likely to have it stolen and you don’t have to worry about freeloaders.
Do OnlyFans free trials auto renew?
By default, an OnlyFans free trial won’t auto-renew, so you can’t set one up in the hope that people will forget about them and lapse into a paid subscription.
This just means you have to work extra-hard to convince people to set up renewal when they are on the free trial. You can do this by making sure your content is amazing, and also by DM-ing people just before their free trial ends.
Don’t be pushy if you do this, but try to tease them with a promise of what they’ll enjoy if they do subscribe. Be polite and thank them for taking part in the free trial, and use this as an opportunity to engage with them one last time before the trial ends. This could be the chance you need to convert them.
