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.

If you’re tired of the political headlines, we’ve got something to distract you – subscription news you can use to grow your business. In this week’s edition of Five on Friday, Pandora and Spotify face the difficult reality of trying to monetize streaming music, Ad Exchanger explains how Google’s GDPR consent tool will limit publishers, Forbes explores blockchain, Axios shows how publishers are using paywalls to stay afloat, and Facebook tries to help people protect their data with new restrictions on Messenger.

A few weeks ago, Zillow, one of the leading real estate listing sites, made a surprising announcement: it was going to enter the business of flipping homes, the process of buying a home, fixing it up and quickly reselling it. Russell Perkins, Managing Director of the InfoCommerce Group and Subscription Insider Guide to Data Publishing, explains why this is not an example to follow.

We’ve got another feature-packed Five on Friday for you. In this week’s edition, PYMNTS explains how free trials help subscription companies turn tryers into buyers, Adblock Plus celebrates a Germany court ruling, Inc. explores why Netflix wants to buy a billboard company, INMA offers insight into how the news media is shifting its subscription strategy by leveraging customer emotions, and Amy Porterfield shares the six principles of GDPR which goes into effect May 25. May the 4th be with you!

It is hard to believe today is the last Friday in April, but here we are. To help you move smoothly into May, we’ve got five great subscription stories to share: PYMNTS explores how subscriptions are changing the video game industry, Digital Trends reports on how 20 million Chrome users got tricked into downloading fake ad blockers, MarTech Advisor shares why it believes subscription businesses will succeed in a data-driven world, Lenfest Institute tells us how Berkeleyside’s direct public offering raised $1 million to fund operations, and Shopify offers advice on how to create a press kit.

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 the last part of our series, Organic Search for Publishers, Kevin Novak explains how to create and scale a system for optimizing organic search across editorial, audience development, and other teams to drive readers deeper into a media property, and support revenue creation.

Online dating pioneer Match Group (NASDAQ: MTCH) is looking for love in all the right places. In fact, the parent company of Tinder, Match.com, OKCupid and other dating sites continues to grow. On May 8, in the company’s first quarter earnings report, Match Group reported total revenue of $407.4 million, a 36 percent increase over the first quarter of 2017. The company also reported net earnings of $100 million, or $0.33 per diluted share, representing growth of 397 percent.

In this week’s subscription news, Apple Music boasts more than 50 million subscribers, Netflix says it is spending 85 percent of its budget on original content, and Snapchat rolls out unskippable, six-second ads. Also this week, YouTube TV tests voice control and incognito mode, Luminary Media raises $40 million in funding, and The Economist launches a new subscription app for readers.

Educational publisher Cengage is under fire for its new unlimited subscription service. Two authors – David Knox and Caroline Schacht – filed suit in the Southern District of New York, claiming that Cengage’s new unlimited subscription service, Cengage Unlimited, will cause their sales and royalties to plummet substantially. Though the suit was filed by only two authors, they are seeking class action status on behalf of other textbook authors.

These days everyone is storing files in the cloud, whether they’re backing up smartphone data or uploading documents to Dropbox, Slack of Google Drive. Earlier this week, Google upped its cloud storage game with the launch of Google One, a simple, cloud-based storage solution for consumers, that will replace Google Drive. Under the new product, subscribers will manage their files through a Google One app, reports CNET.

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.

When it comes to choosing a subscription management platform for your company, there are many options. Choosing the right technology can be a daunting task. Make the right decision and you are a hero. Make the wrong decision and you are faced with higher costs, mismatched features, or worse. Did you know that when buying technology for your business, 35-50% of the sales go to the vendor who responds first? Crazy? For companies that bought in this manner, they typically experience a 50% greater rate of REGRET about their purchase than companies who used a more thoughtful process

In this on-demand seminar, learn the key questions to ask potential vendors, and your team, when selecting the best subscription platform for your business. Kevin Novak, CEO of 2040 Digital and subscription technology expert and Kathy Greenler Sexton, Publisher of Subscription Insider will discuss: The subscription technology landscape, how to self-assess what your company needs, understanding budget and total cost of ownership, and mapping your budget and team to the best platform for your company.

Before you can generate new subscribers you've got to implement systems to stop your members from quitting. This on-demand seminar is focused on delivering actionable tactics to reduce subscriber churn and increase member lifetime value. Robert Skrob, our Insider Guide to Membership Retention, will walk you through 14 tactics to improve your subscriber and member retention. With all that Robert will discuss, there will be at least one strategy revealed that could be a quick, easy win for you, which could improve your renewal rate within two weeks or less.

Several trends are colliding in the business of funding political campaigns. Increasingly polarized voters are expressing their opinions not just with votes but also with individual donations. Candidates are enabling this level of participation with invitations to make affordable, easy donations monthly, or even weekly. And organizations and businesses are making it easy for would-be politicians to make this happen.

Advertising on Facebook is an effective marketing tool for B2B and B2C subscription companies. With the recent changes to its algorithm, it’s now more important than ever to reach and engages your target customers.

Download this Facebook Marketing Trends STATPACK, a 125-page PowerPoint with 55 charts and graphs (with two embedded excel charts), to access trend data on Facebook Marketing.

Subscription Insider STATPACKS are charts and data that you can use to benchmark performance, for your market and budget planning, creating your business plan or even competitive analysis.

This Subscription Insider STATPACK provides statistics and facts on the global online retail e-commerce market. It includes data regarding the global e-commerce market volume as well as information on digital shoppers and consumer spending, as well as mobile commerce and digital payments.

Subscription Insider STATPACKS are charts and data that you can use for your market and budget planning, creating your business plan or even competitive analysis.Download this 124-page PowerPoint with 56 charts and graphs (and three embedded excel charts) to access our trend data and statistics focused on the E-Commerce Worldwide Trends.

Marketing Business-to-Business (B2B) information, data and services businesses are very different than consumer marketing. The challenge is, much of the data focused on marketing is consumer focused. Not anymore. This Subscription Insider STATPACK provides trends for B2B marketing, its leaders, plus B2B marketing strategy and effectiveness trends. Most absolutely shocking stat to us? Only 39% of B2B companies have a formal marketing plan … in 2018!

Subscription Insider STATPACKS are charts and data that you can use for your market and budget planning, creating your business plan or even competitive analysis. Download this 78-page PowerPoint with 34 charts and graphs to access our trend data and statistics focused on B2B Marketing Trends.

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.