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 have ever wondered how you could compete against a free, government online database, Russell Perkins, CEO of InfoCommerce Group and Subscription Insider Guide to Data Publishing Strategy, has your answer. Russell walks through how the company Unbiased used the same data as a government database and created a commercial success.

TGIF. We’ve made it, and the weekend is just around the corner. To help ease you into the weekend, check out this week’s Five on Friday, sharable information and advice to grow your subscription business. In this week’s edition, Insight founder Justin Bariso shares advice from LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner on the value of negative feedback, Business 2 Community details the pros and cons of subscription-based apps, Computerworld reviews four SaaS business plan apps, Swapfiets launches a bicycle subscription, and Hubspot offers 10 alternate email signoffs to make a bigger impact.

Most subscription company owners and managers tell me they’ve already built a new member onboarding program and it didn’t improve their subscriber churn rate. Robert Skrob, our Subscription Insider Guide to Membership Retention, has a fix for that. He shares his copywriting formula for welcome campaigns that make big improvements on subscriber churn, sometimes cutting 30-day churn rates in half.

One simply needs to look around to see retail, publishing, transportation and other sectors thrown into a transformative change as digital and data penetrate every element of a business. Like content, data is currency and technology is now the enabler and source of both. Data is in many ways the new currency. Content is still king, but the definition of content is evolving to include data. Kevin Novak, CEO of 2040 Digital and Subscription Insider Guide to Leveraging Technology, explores benefits of data and its transformative impact for media and information-based businesses.

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?

Last week Luma, maker of mesh home WiFi systems, launched Luma Guardian, a subscription-based service that manages home network privacy, security, performance and support. Developed in partnership with Webroot, Luma touts the new service as “the world’s first personal IT team.” With a 30-day free trial, Luma Guardian is available for $5 a month for the first year through the free Luma app in the App Store or Google Play. Luma has not said what costs after the first year will be.

On July 18, streaming music service Spotify got hit with two more copyright lawsuits, filed in Tennessee Middle District Court in Nashville, by two independent publishers, says The Tennessean. According to The Tennessean, the lawsuits allege that Spotify failed to obtain the necessary licenses for thousands of songs and has, therefore, been illegally streaming them to its listeners. The lawsuits are asking for the maximum allowed of $150,000 for each unlicensed work which would be in the $365 million range if Spotify is determined to have violated copyright law.

Last Thursday Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced its fourth quarter results for its fiscal year ending June 30, 2017, including total revenue of $23.3 billion, operating income of $5.3 billion, net income of $6.5 billion and diluted earnings per share of $0.83. All figures reported are GAAP. The company credits its growing cloud business for its strong fourth quarter results, citing a commercial cloud annualized revenue run rate (ARR) in excess of $18.9 billion. The company’s goal is to achieve a commercial cloud ARR of $20 billion in fiscal 2018.

In this week’s subscription headlines, WWE is considering overseas opportunities to grow its revenue, Dungeons & Dragons goes digital, and Boston Globe’s CEO of seven months has stepped down, effective immediately. Also this week, Google’s new product could pose a threat to LinkedIn, creators who lost revenue during the so-called ‘Adpocalypse’ are fighting back with a class action lawsuit, and Apple adds PayPal support for purchases made through iTunes and the App Store.

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.

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.

Back in 2008, the banking industry was riding high on subprime mortgages that were essentially loans to people who were not good credit risks. Now, a new verse of that tune is playing out in the automotive arena, where subprime car loans are popular, and total auto-associated debt is at record highs. Second verse, same as the first? Automakers are hoping that new car subscription services will mitigate the worst and offer a new model for serving customers who should not be taking out car loans in the first place.

Book publishers, film studios, and TV channels beware! Indie content creators are bypassing traditional intermediaries and forging ongoing relationships directly with subscribing supporters. Two Internet trends -- crowdfunding and indie publishing -- have combined to create a new way to pay for content. Yes, now everybody can cosplay the Florentine Medicis in the role of patrons of the arts.

Console makers are seeking long-term control of the seller/customer relationship, and they see subscription services as a way to lock in brand loyalty. Mobile game publishers are realizing that gamer patience for in-app ads and “freemium upgrades” is wearing thin. So there are strong incentives for both ends of the video game market to look at the Netflix model with envy. However, the analogy between games and filmed entertainment is not perfect, so game publishers face hurdles particular to their industry.

The market for devices that connect to the Internet is huge and growing. Someday soon, car tires will text when they are wearing out, refrigerators will announce the last yogurt, and pacemakers will call an ambulance. And consumers will sign up to pay monthly for all this to work.

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.