I clicked through your site. There were zero hints anywhere that you were looking to sell anything at all until I had gone through four or five pages to create

I clicked through your site. There were zero hints anywhere that you were looking to sell anything at all until I had gone through four or five pages to create the card with including the page of questions I had to answer that left little doubt about your future plans. By the time I hit the pay option I felt ambushed, and worse you had spent zero time marketing to me while I was on your own site! You are 100% right about free customers being much much worse to deal with, I don't envy you there at all. But they don't owe you anything either. With a free tier or trial you're buying an opportunity to market to people and convert them into paying customers, that's all. If you didn't manage to convert that's on you not them, though to be fair it is a very difficult job unless you have a good product. You got some good experience and learned some things that are quite valuable. People will print out free letters but nobody will buy. Traffic like that at Christmas can absolutely make you some real money - I'd suggest trying again next year with some good quality holiday merchandise and amazon's toy affiliate program. Pretty much every visitor there will be buying toys that month, they are thinking about it right and done right quite a few will consider it helpful.