Case Studies

When you've got a passionate community of readers like Tricycle does, you have to tread carefully when it comes to changing your revenue model. We spoke with editor and publisher James Shaheen recently about Tricycle's decision in 2008 to switch to an online membership model and how it not only slashed the nonprofit's fundraising burden, but also led to a $200,000 revenue surplus last year. Read on to discover how the site is getting a 10% free-to-paid conversion rate, an 80% retention rate, using focus groups for price testing, and upselling subscribers on events and retreats. This is a great Case Study for any mission-oriented or nonprofit publication that thinks financial sustainability is outside its grasp!

If you're looking to get inspired by innovative content offerings in the digital subscription department, Jackson Fish Market never disappoints. Last year we profiled its first subscription site, A Story Before Bed. This week, we spoke with CEO Hillel Cooperman about the company's new subscription service -- Slide Bureau, which allows small businesses and professionals to create unique and artistic slide presentations. Cooperman discusses why the iPad app is worth a subscription, why the company is eager to produce custom templates, and why humility is the best approach when launching a new digital subscription product.

What do you do when you have a great subscription product an entire company can benefit from? Sell one division first! We spoke with Sharon Gillenwater, Principal and Founder of Boardroom Insiders, about how this subscription database is using internal champions to shorten its sales cycle. Plus, discover some great content marketing tips for database publishers, why designing a homepage like a landing page is a great idea for B2B sites, and one of the few times PayPal is a great choice for a payment processor.

In December, The New York Times featured Susan Miller's Astrology Zone app in a story about how popular apps are trying to find a revenue stream through paid subscriptions. In this Case Study, we interviewed Miller to get the actual data and stats, which included a 1.3% conversion rate. Read on to discover the pros and cons of the mobile app subscription industry, from awesome member engagement tactics like push notifications to a lack of control when it comes to renewal marketing. Plus, discover the one time social media has a better ROI than email marketing!

Virginia Lawyers Weekly (VLW) has been able to stay both relevant and profitable over a 27-year period, no small feat. Find out how this local B2B publication is leveraging trade show booths like no other and making both its print and Web content highly valuable to subscribers. Plus, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Paul Fletcher tells us how the site is getting a 91% retention rate with a simple practice.

In May of 2013, Enigma joined 30 start-ups vying for attention from venture capitalists at TechCrunch's Disrupt NY. By winning that contest (and $50,000 in seed funding), Enigma's visibility exploded, gaining the site 10,000 opt-ins for its free trial without any SEO whatsoever. In this exclusive Case Study, CEO Jeremy Bronfman spoke to us about how the site is on track to garner 7-figure revenues entirely from subscriptions, the hidden market for APIs, and the downside of massive publicity and broad appeal when it comes to conversion.

Northstar Media successfully changed the tire on a moving car in 2011 by leveraging its existing databases to launch travel42, a B2B subscription database providing customizable reports to travel agents in the US and Canada. We spoke with Tom Cintorino, EVP Digital Media, about how travel42 created a site and content with a better value proposition than the free, user-generated travel reviews out there, as well as how the site acquires new subscribers through marketing deals with travel consortia. Plus, find out how the site is getting an 87% retention rate and selling site licenses with tiered pricing.

When Publisher Anderson Charters bought Canadian Donor's Guide in 2002, he knew the directory world was changing. Thus, in 2008, he launched CharityCAN, an online database incorporating the data from the Canada Revenue Agency and other sources for fundraising organizations and non-profit professionals looking to conduct prospecting research. In this exclusive Case Study, Charters and Associate Publisher Alison Stoneman spoke with us about how the site sells high-priced subscriptions by mining its own database and placing traditional outbound sales calls. Plus, learn the right (and wrong) way to develop an online B2B lead nurturing campaign and set up a conversion funnel for group subscriptions.

Real estate listings are almost always a profitable venture online, and almost always supported by advertising. But IndiaProperty.com is unique in its ability to sell subscriptions on both its B2B and B2C sides, in part because of its good fortune of launching during a boom in India's real estate market. CEO Ganesh Vasudevan spoke to us about how the site is selling individual and group subscriptions to construction companies and real estate sellers, as well as upselling consumers into AssistedProperty.com, a search service that helps Indians living abroad vet and buy property in India. Plus, given Vasudevan's experience with dating sites, this is a great Case Study for anyone interested in A/B test results on page design and button color, or how to maximize SEO and SEM.

After Andrew Warner sold his start-up in his twenties for millions, he found that he enjoyed educating other budding entrepreneurs about how to succeed. After a failed attempt to start an events business, Warner turned to video interviews and e-courses, and quickly discovered that subscriptions were the best business model for his new site, Mixergy.com.