Getting the most out of a free trial.
Note: This blog post was originally written in July 2019. Due to switching website providers, I am updating and reposting all of my blog posts.
Free trials are a great way to see if a genealogy platform is right for you, especially since some websites and resources have very expensive monthly or yearly fees. Free trials can also be wonderful if you are searching for an elusive ancestor who turns up crickets and tumbleweeds on other websites, as different genealogy platforms hold different record collections.
But how do you get the most out of a free trial? Here are some tips that may help:
1. Schedule the trial for when you have free time:
Nothing’s worse than signing up for a free trial during the week, getting distracted by other things, and then coming back to find that your trial has ended and you were charged a large sum of money. Instead, try to sign up when there is a long weekend or a holiday. This gives you plenty of time to binge-research without having to worry about time running out.
2. One free trial at a time:
Signing up for multiple free trials at once is an easy thing to do when caught up in excitement. But, by having too many trials at once, it’s easy to lose track of which ones you have cancelled and which ones you haven’t, which can result in you being automatically charged a lot of money by a genealogy platform. As soon as I am finished with one trial, I like to cancel it straightaway, then start another if I have time.
3. Be Methodical:
Before I start a free trial, I like to make a list of the ancestors/topics I am hoping to research and have their family tree profiles set up in seperate tabs on my computer. This makes it easy to refer to the information I already have while I research, and makes it easy to update the profiles as I come across new information during the trial. I also make sure that I start with the most important research first. That way, if the trial ends before I am finished researching, I will at least have researched what was most important.
5. Go for the best/premium version of the genealogy platform.
It’s a free trial - you might as well get the best version that you can!
I hope these tips will help you the next time you sign up for a free trial.
Best wishes,
Liliana