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, a new California law makes it easier for subscribers to cancel their subscriptions online (it could help subscribers in other states too), we look at the battle between retail giants Amazon and Walmart, the EU rejects the Copyright Directive aimed at big tech platforms, Forbes shares business metrics every company needs to know to be successful, and LinkedIn posts top subscription jobs.

"Flipping" data, enhancing data, and data exhaust are just some of the opportunities to create revenue-producing data products from free resources. Russell Perkins, Subscription Insider Guide to Data Publishing, explores how to create a data-focused product for your subscription business.

In this week’s Five on Friday, Google undergoes a major rebranding to simplify its offerings, Cobloom shares ways to reduce SaaS customer acquisition costs, Billboard reports that Sir Paul McCartney is reaching out to European regulators for copyright reform and to address the value gap in payments for digital music, Business.com offers tips for using influencer marketing effectively, and Shopify gives ways to use social media marketing to increase online sales.

In this week’s edition of Five on Friday, Forbes Agency Council outlines strategies to overcome ad blocking, Winnipeg Free Press uses micropayments as a top-of-the-funnel strategy, Harvard Business Review explores how sales teams are impacted when companies transition to subscription models, Associations Now discusses the benefits of monthly subscriptions, and Hubspot shares customer service secrets from beauty brand Glossier.

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.

Credit card transactions have topped three and a third TRILLION dollars. With that volume, even a tiny percent of misfires create problems on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars. Companies that depend on card transactions, especially those who depend on recurring payments, need to be proactive in preparing for pitfalls.

Understanding how payments work is a key foundation to selecting the right vendors for your subscription or membership business. This guide will help you understand the mechanics of a payment, key terms, and the key players involved from the moment your customer submits a payment to your business, to when the money for that customer’s subscription gets into your bank account.

The idea of influencers is not a new one. In fact, they’ve been around for decades, often times in the form of a celebrities as company spokespeople. Remember Brooke Shields and her Calvins? O.J. Simpson for Hertz? William Shatner for Priceline.com? Joe Dimaggio and his Mr. Coffee? Those are all examples of influencers. The marketing world has evolved since then, but instead of having spokespeople, brands, including subscription companies, are now using (paid) influencers to promote and share their products and services. It is a subtler, but more meaningful approach. Let’s take a closer look.

In other merger news this week, members of the Federal Communications Commission unanimously voted to send the proposed $3.9 billion Sinclair-Tribune merger to an administrative judge for review, reports Poynter. FCC chair Ajit Pai expressed concern that Sinclair might be planning to spin off some of the Tribune TV stations to companies that have ties to the founders of Sinclair, which would be a violation of FCC regulations.

The Washington Post is looking for new ways to engage younger audiences. On Monday, The Post announced it was launching a channel on Twitch to stream live coverage of “must-watch news and political events.” The first event was Monday morning when Libby Casey hosted a live stream about President Donald Trump’s and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first summit. Casey was joined by White House reporter David Nakamura and audience editor Gene Park to break down the summit and the ramifications it holds for our nation.

This week is not off to a good start for Netflix. On Monday, the streaming video on demand pioneer reported its second quarter financials. While the report was strong, Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) said in a letter to shareholders that the quarter was ‘not stellar.’ The biggest difference between actual versus forecast figures was in the membership category. Membership grew by 5.2 million to 130 million members, but this was lower than the 6.2 million new members forecast for the quarter. Netflix said it fell short because it had over-forecast global additions and acquisition growth was slower than expected.

Last week Hearst Communications Inc. agreed to pay $50 million to settle an alleged violation of the Michigan Video Rental Privacy Act, reports Law360. In a 2015 case in which plaintiff Josephine James Edwards sought class action status, Hearst was accused of selling its magazine customers’ subscription information including magazine subscription histories, reading habits, age, race, religion, charitable donations, political affiliations, income range, shopping habits and other personal data to third parties including data-mining companies without consent.

 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.

If you operate a subscription or membership business – regardless of subscription vertical, industry, consumer focus, or transaction volume – your revenue is impacted by payment trends and market dynamics happening right now. This on-demand online seminar will help you understand payment trends that will impact your business in 2018. it will also walk through the tactics and best-practices subscription merchants should employ to mitigate the negative impact on your profitability from these trends.

One mistake that many SaaS businesses make is thinking that once a subscription management system is in place, they are all set. In this on-demand seminar, we will outline the strategies and tactics that SaaS companies should employ to grow revenue, by keeping customers engaged.

As a mature market full of established business owners, the car wash industry has only lately moved to subscription offerings. However, as operators learn that their fears in offering unlimited service are mostly unfounded, many are embracing a new way to monetize customers.

In the growing, $45 billion U.S. organic food market, some consumers are going beyond the organic label to seek a subscription relationship with the 7,000-plus local food growers offering clear chain-of-custody practices, so that foodies know where their produce comes from.

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?

LinkedIn, Slack, DropBox, Pandora, Spotify, and just about every mobile video game are generating revenue despite a business model that includes most of their customers using their services for free. Clever developers and content producers have learned that attracting A LOT OF customers can be as important as attracting PAYING customers. And the most clever are finding innovative ways to derive real value from the users who pay nothing at all.

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.