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, PR Daily shares seven digital tools perfect for streamlining social media marketing, Search Engine Land explains how Google calculates web page authority, Maximize Social Business offers the five essential elements for a winning infographic, PYMNTS.com interviews Recurly CEO Dan Burkhart on how recurring revenue is no longer a “one-and-done” proposition, and Hubspot offers advice on how sales reps can decide whether to call or email a new prospect.

This has been a great week for Subscription Insider, wrapping up another sold-out Payment Boot Camp. We enjoyed meeting some of you and sharing the wisdom of our subscription, billing and payment experts! While that was going on, we were also working on this week’s edition of Five on Friday. In this issue, Pagefair shows how Facebook is winning with its ad block strategy, PR Daily shares how marketers can increase webinar attendance, Meredith Corp. signs 700,000 paid subscribers to The Magnolia Journal, Media Blog tells us how to create viral content in 6 steps, and CIO shares 8 things that CMOs need to know now. Enjoy!

B2B prospect identification and targeting have come a long way in the last few years. Things that once seemed impossible are now taken for granted. As Subscribcription Insider Guide to Data Publishing Strategy, Russell Perkins explains, CaliberMind is an example of company that shows that data opportunities are everywhere – and that the tools needed to collect, process and apply data continue to get more and more powerful.

In this week’s Five on Friday, Vindicia shares how companies have revamped their past services through subscriptions, Forbes reveals four corporate communications best practices from GE, Kissmetrics explains how Netflix keeps its churn rate low by keeping its subscribers engaged and watching, MarketingProfs offers ways to increase traffic organically, and LinkedIn posts some great subscription jobs.

In part three of Organic Search for Publishers, Kevin Novak continues this theme but specifically educates members on keywords and why they are important. As Kevin explains, smart editorial organizations understand how their users are finding them through longer and longer search queries and leveraging this information to create more traction with their SEO efforts and other marketing programs.

In part two of Organic Search for Publishers, Kevin Novak walks through why segmentation of your subscribers (and prospects) and talking to them in their own voice are so important to an effective organic search strategy. In Organic Search for Publishers: Why Segmentation and Voice are Important, you will learn how why it’s imperative to get beyond internal thinking that can create false target segments and related content that true customers will not identify with. You will also understand why looking eternally to understand the vocabulary and nuances of how each segment communicates and finds information will be a key cornerstone to your organic search program.

In part one of Organic Search for Publishers, Kevin Novak walks through the basics of what organic search is and more importantly, why organic search is still relevant in the age of social media. If you are not achieving 55% to 75% of inbound traffic from organic, you are underperforming. The new reality of organic search is that you must accommodate and deliver engaging content that is easily discoverable. In Organic Search for Publishers: Understanding the Basics, you will learn how people search for information and how they find and engage with your content. In addition, you will understand the key signals a search engine uses to determine if your content is presented to someone doing a search.

Marketing Automation and lead generation continues to be a key challenge for subscription marketers. Kevin Novak, Subscription Insider Guide to Leveraging Technology, walks through a primer (and 30-page PDF slide how-to deck) on how to generate high-quality leads using lead scoring using marketing automation, behavioral and interaction data to move the lead from awareness to decision quickly and effectively.

Last week Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) reported its third quarter fiscal year 2017 financials for the period ended April 29, 2017. The company had $11.9 billion in revenue, a 1 percent decrease year over year. Recurring revenue represented 31 percent of the total, a 2 percent increase year over year. The company also reported GAAP net income of $2.5 billion, or GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.50. Other highlights for the third quarter of fiscal year 2017 include...

Current, a nonprofit news organization for public media, is launching a metered paywall to cover its $1 million+ in annual operating costs. According to an announcement on the site, Current has four primary revenue streams: a generous grant from Wyncote Foundation, advertising revenue, donations and print subscriptions. Print subscriptions, however, have dwindled in recent years, and more and more readers are getting their news from online Current.org rather than the print publication.

In this week’s subscription headlines, Conde Nast eyes commerce opportunities with branded subscription boxes, Netflix cancels support for millions of smartphones and tablets, and Facebook admits another faux pas – its 10th measurement mistake since September. Ugh. Also this week, Motley Fool offers an earnings preview for Cisco, Spotify partners with Capital One and Lionsgate is fined for its use of Jillian Michaels’ fitness videos.

With quarterly revenue of $52.9 billion, net income of $11.0 billion, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $2.10, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) had a strong fiscal 2017 second quarter for the period ended April 1, 2017. For the same period last year, Apple reported $50.6 billion and earnings per diluted share of $1.90. Apple’s board of directors approved a 10.5 percent increase to its quarterly dividend, declaring a dividend of $0.63 per share, payable on May 18.

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. …

A look at the emerging subscription box industry reveals rising popularity, new player launches, established retailer buy-in, and keen investor interest. Signs, however, point both to growth and consolidation ahead.

Many print newspapers have been around for more than 100 years. Digital news, on the other hand, is relatively young in terms of life cycle. Unfortunately, the news industry continues to struggle with the transition away from print toward the digital side of the house and how to monetize it. Arvid Tchivzhel of Mather Economics discusses the revenue strategies of news content to better understand ROI and shares insight into how a subtle change in mindset can make a big difference.

Since the AMEX-COSTCO "divorce", many recurring merchants have been proactive reaching out to customers to mitigate its impact since American Express cards operate separately from the Visa/MasterCard Account Updater network. Melanie Stout, of the Paul Larsen Consulting Group, outlines their latest data on declines and on the "divorce's" ongoing impact to recurring subscription merchants.

As ad blocking usage continues to grow, publishers and organizations like the Newspaper Association of America are turning up the heat, to fight against companies like Adblock Plus, Brave and Optimal who threaten their livelihood. As ad revenue declines because of ad blocking, publishers like Axel Springer are waging court battles abroad to fight against unfair competition and business practices, while in the U.S., the NAA takes their complaint to the NAA.The growth of mobile ad blocking escalates the problem, particularly for mixed revenue business models. In this report, we've got the latest ad blocking news with exclusive commentary from NAA and Adblock Plus.

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.