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.

When the next recession hits, we can expect to see hundreds of thousands of layoffs again. Plus, during any recession, customers cut expenses even when they haven’t yet experienced a job loss. Many of today’s fastest growing subscription boxes won’t survive the next recession. Robert Skrob, Insider Guide to Membership Retention, explains what membership-focused companies need to do now to prepare.

“Democratization” is the latest trend in data. While it is rapidly acquiring multiple definitions, the one I find most useful suggests that there is a growing opportunity to open up complex datasets to people who could benefit from them, but haven’t traditionally used them. Russell Perkins, Subscription Insider Guide to Data Publishing, explains.

In this week’s Five on Friday, Kissmetrics shares seven simple but powerful ways to lower SaaS customer churn, Digiday offers a marketer's guide to the new EU global data protection regulations, CFO tells us more about the revenue recognition "doomsday clock," which is just six months away, BlogNotions gives us seven ways to improve content promotion, and CEO Marissa Mayer is out as Verizon’s $4.48 billion acquisition of Yahoo is finalized, but she walks away with a $23 million golden parachute.

Content is a major aspect of your membership business. Regardless of whether you offer an online service, a gym membership, or something entirely different – you have to get your content right. Scott Whitaker, Subscription Insider Guide to Membership Strategy, walks through a 3-step exercise to help your membership organization create an effective content system: a catalog, categories, and a calendar.

Kevin Novak continues his discussion on how to implement an effective SEO strategy. In part seven of Organic Search for Publishers, he explains where and how to use the keywords and phrases that are important for your business in your content and meta information. Kevin also goes deeper and explains what structured metadata is as well as why and how you should be leveraging that in your publication to more effectively communicate and provide context about your content for search engines.

Kevin Novak continues his discussion on how to implement an effective SEO strategy. In part six of Organic Search for Publishers, he explains and demonstrates the tools every editorial, marketing, and audience development team should use when determining what keywords will be used as part of their organic search strategy.

Kevin Novak continues his discussion on how to implement an effective SEO strategy. In part five of Organic Search for Publishers, he discusses the big mistake publishers make in their metadata, walks through how to choose the right long- and short-tail keywords for your business, shows examples of how a publisher should use keyword discovery tools and his favorite keyword discovery tools that publishers should use.

In part four of Organic Search for Publishers, Kevin Novak begins his discussion on how to implement an effective SEO strategy. He discusses the one big thing content publishers miss when optimizing their content for organic search: Contextualization. It’s not enough to publish an article, provide some metadata and links. TODAY content publishers need to provide contextualization for that article. That is, what will a reader achieve or get by acting with the content?

In December, a federal judge ordered video filtering service VidAngel to shut down its operations due to alleged copyright violations. Based in Utah, VidAngel’s mission is to help faith-based audiences bypass offensive video content including nudity and profanity. While VidAngel appeals that ruling, the Utah-based company has launched a new subscription service to help viewers screen content on streaming services including Netflix, Amazon and HBO through Amazon Channels, reports Variety. Additional services to be added will be Hulu, Apple TV, Vudu, Google Play and Showtime.

Yesterday Etsy, Inc. (NASDAQ: ETSY), an online marketplace for creative entrepreneurs, announced that it is making some big changes, including a sharpened focus on key growth initiatives and realigning its internal resources to maximize value to stakeholders. Under the direction of new CEO Josh Silverman, the company plans to prioritize specific areas including search and discovery, improving the customer experience, driving frequency, maximizing their marketing spending, and providing world-class marketing tools to Etsy sellers.

In a memo to staff last week, Time Inc. (NASDAQ: TIME) announced it would cut 300 jobs through layoffs and buyouts, reports USA Today. The jobs to be eliminated represent about 4 percent of the company’s global workforce. More than half of the jobs to be cut are based in the U.S., and 40 percent will come from employees who accepted voluntary buyouts. Time Inc. owns more than 100 magazine brands including Time magazine, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Life, Cooking Light, Food & Wine and Golf Magazine.

Last Friday Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) got one step closer to its retail dominance over competitor Walmart when it announced that it would acquire Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ: WFM) for $42 per share, or approximately $13.7 billion, in an all-cash transaction. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Market will continue to operate under the Whole Foods brand, and John Mackey will stay on as CEO. This deal has the potential to dramatically increase Amazon’s footprint in the retail grocery industry.

Learn how to maximize SaaS and software retention rates. During this on-demand seminar, Adriana Iordan—expert in global eCommerce and payments and Chief Product Officer at Avangate—will teach attendees why SaaS subscription businesses face unique customer retention challenges and how to handle them. This session includes benchmark data, best practice tactics, and three separate case studies to help you learn how to overcome the unique challenges SaaS recurring businesses face.

Revenue signals go way beyond renewal and churn KPIs. In order to maximize potential revenue, you need to get under the hood of your subscription product or service to understand revenue-related data.  These “revenue signals” are in your billing, product, and customer data and they show where your subscription business is at risk for lower revenue or where you losing potential revenue opportunities.  In this on-demand seminar, you will learn what to look at in your own data and analytics, what learnings you can glean from each revenue signal, what actions your subscription business should think about taking, and most importantly, the revenue impact of acting or not acting on each signal.

Have you seen a rise in declines or a rise in chargebacks or fraud? Are your renewals taking longer to successfully process? Do you understand why? Paul Larsen, Subscription Insider Guide to Payment Processing, leading expert in card-not-present recurring payments, and Managing Partner of the Paul Larsen Group, in this on-demand version of our January 2017 online seminar, will outline key payment processing trends every subscription company should be aware of, and be on top of, for 2017.

Understand state, Federal, and credit card regulations that cover subscription promotional and trial offers as well as auto-renewal practices. This one-hour on-demand training session features Lisa B. Dubrow, Esq., Subscription Insider's Guide to Regulation and Compliance and one of America's leading attorneys specializing in helping paid subscription businesses, membership organizations, and continuity clubs understand how the law impacts their business on a practical level. …

The streaming digital video market is chaotic, competitive, and rapidly evolving. But the market is also marked by intense consumer demand and the willingness of those consumers to pay — and to subscribe. That means the market may be a free-for-all, but one in which there is big growth potential for companies who can offer video on demand that meets subscriber desire for compelling original content and the convenience of anytime, anywhere satisfaction.

As reading becomes just one more thing you can do on your screen, new digital competition is pushing eBook, eNewspaper, and eMagazine brands in multiple directions. Prospects for revenue growth are not bright, and will not brighten unless find ways not just to cope with technology challenges, but to transform them into strengths.

The online dating industry is stuck in a rut, facing forecasts of dwindling revenue growth and flat penetration rates. The largest company has missed its most recent revenue target as it struggles against self-cannibalization by its very popular free option. The second-place company is looking to diversify into the job recruitment arena, and lesser competitors are facing obstacles. A forecast of flat-to-low growth may reflect the pessimistic opinion that current industry leaders are poorly positioned to take advantage of coming opportunities. However, research suggests untapped demographics and pathways to overcome these hurdles. This column looks at new research conducted in April 2017 to find the best ways to compete for subscribers.

Millennial consumers may be a media brand’s most valuable customer. For print magazines evolving to digital, this demographic is most likely to use the digital side of your brand, saving you paper, ink, and stamps. And every brand will value the loyalty these consumers have to the brands they favor. Polling shows that Millennials are more likely to continue to subscribe to the brands they like, and less likely to cancel, even when money is tight. Their preference for auto-deduct payments is another demonstration of loyalty and makes their subscription behavior less subject to extinction-level annual reassessments.

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.