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.

We hope you have had a great week! We are here to wrap it up with the week’s Five on Friday. In this edition, we’ll share details about Europe’s brand new copyright law, why customers prefer convenience over strong authentication, proven customer retention strategies, how to maximize your brand on Twitter and how Apple is encouraging developers to consider subscription options in a new video.

LinkedIn’s future is bright indeed, but it depends on management focusing on its remarkable data trove, rather than being a Facebook for business. Russel Perkins, Insider Guide to Data and Managing Director of the InfoCommerce Group, explains.

Summer may be over, but subscriptions are still hot. We’ve got three publishing-related tidbits for you and everyone’s favorite feature – top subscription jobs! In the publishing world, newspaper tariffs have been reversed. What does this mean for the newspaper industry? Next, we’ll share the latest merger feud – this time around Sinclair Broadcasting is countersuing Tribune Media. Also this week, Conde Nast will pay $14 million to settle a case involving the sale of…

Before you head out for the three-day weekend, check out this week’s edition of Five on Friday. Disqus explores why readers pay for news, Ad Week explains ways media companies can use native advertising to their advantage, a consumer watchdog group in the U.K. is monitoring social influencers who may not be disclosing paid promotions, YouTube is being strategic about its premium content and Shigeru Miyamoto urges game developers to embrace subscription-based services.

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.

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.

After detecting an attack toward its servers last week, ad blocker AdGuard reset all users’ passwords. The company has 5 million users worldwide. AdGuard assured users that the company’s servers were not compromised, so the resetting of passwords was mostly a preventative measure. The company has since set stricter password requirements, and they have connected to HaveIBeenPwned API, a website that gathers data about all known compromised passwords. If a user tries a password found in this database, the user will receive a warning.

A week after Apple revealed the Apple Watch Series 4, Fitbit (NYSE: FIT) announced the launch of Fitbit Care, a program that combines the new Fitbit Plus app, Fitbit wearables and health coaching for healthcare plans, employers and health systems. The new program is made possible through Fitbit’s acquisition of Twine Health, a health coaching platform that helps users achieve better health outcomes, ultimately helping employer health programs lower healthcare costs.

This week’s subscription news features a variety of subscription companies – news, fitness, cars, movies, payments and more. The Globe and Mail launches Canada’s first premium subscription news service about cannabis, Audi tests a car subscription service in Dallas, and according to CNBC, Netflix could lose one-fourth of its subscribers if it runs ads on the streaming video on-demand service. Also this week, celebrity fitness trainer Dana Perri launches a subscription service, Instagram Shopping gets a personalized explore channel and stories tags, and Snapchat partners with 25 media companies.

Rent the Runway is expanding, this time adding a standalone store in San Francisco, reports TechCrunch. This location will be in addition to stores in Woodland Hills, California, Washington, D.C., Chicago and its flagship store in New York City. The San Francisco store will be open 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Friday as well as weekend hours. The stores, of course, supplement the company’s successful fashion rentals and subscription services.

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.

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!

We are sure you are up to speed on “Cord-Cutter” trends, what about “Cord-Trimmers” and “Cord-Nevers”? Understand the trends, predictions, demographics, habits, and impact of subscription video streaming. What caught our attention in this report, was the pace of change moving forward, how much time consumers are spending with subscription video (versus other forms of video), and how cord-cutters and cord-nevers are acting similarly as the market matures. There are lots more insights enclosed including, understanding consumer habits, streaming service trends and predictions, details on who cord-cutters and cord-nevers are, an overview of their impact on the Pay TV market, and more. This STATPACK is 68 pages, editable, with 30 detailed charts.

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.