I think there are a lot of services where a 1-month free trial will prevent the kind of growth you need to sustain yourself. For a perfect example: LinkedIn. I

I think there are a lot of services where a 1-month free trial will prevent the kind of growth you need to sustain yourself. For a perfect example: LinkedIn. It's a freemium service where recruiters and other big-players pay for increased access. Another example is Flickr: There are so many photo-sharing sites that who would sign up for a paid one with so many others for free? Running a freemium site requires walking a line between the free and paid users. It can be sleazy, but it doesn't have to be, and there are definitely models where it makes sense.