In the summer of 2012, Liz Cadman knew she had a problem. She was addicted to subscription boxes, and she wanted more. She couldn't find the information she wanted online, however, to make smart buying decisions, so she started a blog to talk about subscription boxes. The blog grew into My Subscription Addiction, a full-fledged website dedicated to the discussion of subscription boxes. In four years, the site has exploded in popularity, and she has added additional features including swaps, a discussion forum and more. Learn how My Subscription Addiction started and grew into what it is today.

How can you combine a wholesale book business and a passion for children's literacy to get more books in the hands of kids? With the subscription box model. That's how founder Eric Shmuely made his dream become a reality -- by creating a subscription book service for children.

Last year the publishing industry was abuzz with the news that the Winnipeg Free Press was experimenting with a Read Now Pay Later micropayment platform, where readers pay $0.27 (Canadian) per article they have read. Dana Neuts explores how well the first seven months of the strategy has gone.

At just three years old, Readly has experienced rapid growth and is defining success in the digital magazine publishing space. Now offering nearly 1,100 magazines and more than 17,000 issues in 49 countries, learn more about Readly in this exclusive INSIDER Case Study.

In this week’s Five on Friday, we’ve got tips for successful SaaS onboarding from Forbes, an update from Engadget on Volvo’s mobile bet to push its car subscription service, insight from Marketing Week on how Dollar Shave Club is adjusting its business model due to slowing growth of subscriptions, Sony-owned Funimation’s separation from Crunchyroll and VRV, and everyone’s favorite feature – top subscription jobs from Disney, Birchbox, Amazon and more.

In this week’s edition of Five on Friday, we’ve got some great subscription articles to share. Google finally says good-bye to social media platform, Google+, MarTech Advisor shares tips on how to scale SaaS revenue by using a predictable pipeline, eMarketer tells us why people hate digital ads, TechRadar reveals why setting your browser to “do not track” mode doesn’t actually work, and Fast Company explores the $2.6 billion subscription box market.

Numerous online marketing trade associations have announced their latest initiative to bring structure and transparency to an industry that can only be called the Wild, Wild West of the data world: online audience data. Their approach offers some useful lessons to data publishers.

Halloween is just around the corner and we have tricks and treats in this week’s Five on Friday: the FBI investigates ad fraud and questionable media buying practices in the U.S., Apple puts a stop to tricksters using deceitful practices to entice users into subscribing, Discord opens a beta games store and revamps its Nitro games subscription, DocuSign agrees to acquire SpringCM, and Shopify shares three support channels your subscription business needs now.

A third of consumers have complained about companies on social media, and almost 40 percent are OK with using social channels for customer support. What’s your strategy for serving these customers and managing the way they interact with your brand? Remember, whatever your strategy, the Internet is watching!

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of effective customer service. But how do you know if you are delivering that? And what channels -- phone, email, chat, social media, etc. -- should you emphasize? How about innovations like chatbots, intelligent agents, and other automated systems?

Measuring customer service breaks down into two general areas: satisfaction metrics based on customer attitudes and performance metrics based on support staff behavior. …

The entertainment industry has been complaining for years about its staggering losses due to piracy. However, even as the video, game, and music industries have evolved toward subscription and streaming business models, they continue to generate significant profits. Media firms still say that rampant thievery is costing them billions -- over $50 billion in 2017! Where’s the resolution to this conundrum?

Credit cards are a blessing and a curse for subscription publishers and monthly box merchants. Yes, auto-pay on a regular basis is sweet indeed, but it comes with the peril of card default. Cards expire or max out, customers dispute charges, and more ... but there are ways to minimize the detrimental effects of credit card declines and chargebacks on your subscription business.

One month after SiriusXM announced that it would acquire Pandora for $3.5 billion in an all-stock transaction, Pandora (NYSE: P) reported its third quarter financials. Highlights for the quarter included total revenue of $417.6 million, a 16 percent increase year-over-year, excluding revenue from Ticketfly and the company’s previous operations in Australia and New Zealand. Pandora also reported subscription revenue of $125.8 million, a 49 percent increase, and advertising revenue of $291.9 million. Pandora added 784,000 subscribers during the quarter, bringing it to 6.8 million total Pandora Plus and Pandora Premium subscribers. By comparison, at the end of its third quarter, SiriusXM had 33.7 million subscribers.

In this week’s subscription news, Digital First Media lays off 107 at its service center, FabFitFun surpasses $200 million in revenue and hits the 1-million-subscriber milestone, and Ubers tries to compete with Lyft with its own subscription service. Also this week, CNBC reports that ESPN+ will cost Disney big bucks this year as part of a long-term strategy, AMC Theatres beats Wall Street estimates, and IBM agrees to buy Red Hat.

Apple started the month off right with a strong earnings report on November 1 for its fiscal fourth quarter ended September 28, 2018. Among the highlights are quarterly revenue of $62.9 billion, a 20 percent increase year-over-year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $2.91, representing a 41 percent increase over earnings for the same period last year. International sales made up 61 percent of revenue for the quarter. Of particular note was the company’s Services revenue which hit an all-time high of $10 billion, an increase of $2.1 billion, or 27 percent, over the same period last year.

While other auto manufacturers like Toyota, Jeep and Lexus are jumping on the car subscription bandwagon, Cadillac is about to hop off. According to CNET and The Wall Street Journal, Cadillac will terminate its car subscription service by year end. The Book by Cadillac service is currently available in three markets: Los Angeles, Dallas and New York. The Wall Street Journal reports there were issues with the technology that supported the subscription service, creating extra customer service work and costs. Current subscribers will be notified and have 30 days to return their vehicles.

Subscriber retention is a cornerstone of successful subscription commerce. However, credit card declines and failed payments can lead to churn and lost revenue. In this on-demand webinar, we will take an in-depth look at the latest subscription industry benchmarks based on a sample set of 1,200 subscription businesses. Understand what is working in payment decline management and get your all your subscriber retention questions answered.

Looking to transition your products or services from perpetual licenses, or one-off purchases, to a recurring revenue model? In this on-demand webinar, we outline successful strategies and tactics to help your software business transform into a recurring revenue machine.

 Do you have great content (or a service or organization) and want to make more money with it online via memberships?

In this on-demand seminar, author and membership expert Rob Ristagno will teach you his "Five Forces Framework" to help you do just that.  Based on his book, A Member Is Worth a Thousand Visitors, Rob will guide you step-by-step through the five forces of creating new online revenue growth, and show you why it is…

Do you know how to achieve the "Retention Point" in your business, that moment when your members fall in love with you and become Lifers? In this on-demand seminar, we'll show you why that happens and the exact steps to make it happen more often, on purpose. With one-half of subscription revenue growth coming from retention, understanding how to achieve your own Retention Point can make a big difference in your renewals.

Apple is pushing hard toward subscriptions both in its app store and with its latest cloud and hardware offerings. But the personal computer giant is not blazing a trail with software as a service for consumers: Microsoft and Adobe got there first.

Sharing content, by consumers and businesses alike, is the goal of so many on social media. But how many are effectively sharing their content, to how many and is ti effective? In this Subscription Insider STATPACK, we explore social content sharing among internet users. It highlights photo and video sharing apps, as well as the sharing of personal information via social networks online. This STATPACK is 109 pages, editable, with 50 detailed charts and four embedded excel tables.

Fashion-related Subscription Boxes are big, literally changing how consumers discover and find new wardrobe items for their closets. This Subscription Insider STATPACK presents insights and statistics on the fashion e-commerce market in the United States. It provides an overview of the market volume and statistics on consumer spending and shopping behavior. It also includes data on the most relevant online retailers and websites, as well as information on mobile shopping and digital payment usage.

A third of consumers have complained about companies on social media, and almost 40 percent are OK with using social channels for customer support. What’s your strategy for serving these customers and managing the way they interact with your brand? Remember, whatever your strategy, the Internet is watching!

Are you receiving more alerts notifying you of expiring cards? We have and frankly, it’s no surprise with the increase in the volume of payment cards that been reissued. Without that updated payment information, subscribers and members will not get renewed successfully. In this sample, we show you real examples of payment card update notices from three separate companies, with three very different approaches to getting their subscribers to update their payment information. Plus, a bonus, Subscription Insider’s own notice!

ABC Mouse Early Learning Academy is an award-winning, subscription-based site/mobile app that uses email promotions to acquire subscribers. In this Sample, we walk through their promotional email campaign and offers. Are they sending too many promotions? Are they effective? You be the judge.

You may not be a sports fan, per se, but everyone plays games, whether it's chess, checkers or Thursday nights down at the local bridge club. We took a look at three sports-themed businesses offering subscriptions to see how well (or not) they are converting visitors into subscribers.

Many subscription sites are using some lighthearted copy that borders on passive-aggression. Is this an effective tactic? What do you think?

Understanding the difference between your most valuable customers and those that will not renew, is like separating out the wheat seeds from all the wheat chaff at harvest time. It will take the right tools and tactics to maximize renewal rates. Subscription Insider's Retention Workbook (Excel) will help you track the retention performance by key drivers in your business, turning your data into both a summary and a detailed retention report that you can use to manage your retention.

Does your subscription management or billing platform connect you to Account Updater — a service offered by Visa, MasterCard, Discover and more recently, American Express — that provides updated payment card information to help merchants manage involuntary churn issues? With this directory of 25 subscription management and billing platforms that support account updater services, you'll be able to create a short list of vendor contenders for your subscription business based on applicable industry experience, existing customers, payment gateways and processors supported, as well as pricing.

This extremely detailed subscription & membership financial model was developed as a tool for would-be subscription businesses who either are planning a new launch or an acquisition. It may also be useful for current publishers who are doing a minimum of marketing and who want to see how their cash flow might change if they ramp up marketing and/or ancillary product offers. Its purpose is educational and inspirational rather than strictly predictive . Everyone's business is slightly different, so it was impossible for us to create an easy-to-use model that would work with enormous accuracy for all. However, if you've not modelled this type of business extensively before, you'll learn a great deal from it!

Effective monitoring of subscriber retention is the result of understanding retention opportunities and trends, tracking attrition patterns, developing a tracking methodology, and applying those metrics in order to manage your retention business more effectively. Use this excel workbook to track and manage your subscribers and members.