Last week, a Forevercasher asked me to share some thoughts about starting an online subscription service. So here are some basic guidelines and tips that can get you started.
1) Publish an eBook and test the demand and interest in your chosen subject. In the member’s area of this site, the success story of Ty Cohen can help you to find a niche with high interest and low competition.
2) Build a website on your chosen subject and start a free mailing list. Along with regularly updating your blog, answering questions, and communication via Social Media, send out killer free information through a weekly/monthly newsletter and prove that you have value.
3) Start a subscription program with your members. The website www.entrepeneurs-journey.com gives the following suggestions:
The idea is to educate your prospects, blow them away with the quality of your free info, leaving them eager to sign up for your paid service. As Daryl stated – if your free stuff is that good, imagine how good the paid content must be! – That’s a pretty compelling proposition.
Daryl continued to discuss options regarding how to create the content for subscription services, since if people are paying a monthly fee there has to be ongoing fresh value. Once again, just like the eBook model, conducting interviews with experts is one option for content creation, however you can go much further than that by providing camtasia presentations, audio downloads, transcripts of audio, teleseminars, private coaching over the phone, live webinars – the options really are endless.
At a basic level you can break your eBook chapters down into a course, create an audio to complement each chapter, perhaps include some interviews and transcripts too. If you have a twelve chapter eBook, then you already have an outline for the first twelve months of your subscription service.
So it’s a matter of convincing those who are enjoying what you already provide for free to enjoy even more quality content for subscribing.
Key to all of this is a hassle-free sign up process (like PayPal) and good customer service.
So in review, find a subject with lots of interest; provide high-value free content that will serve as proof that the paid content must be even better; deliver on your promises. Give the people something so good they won’t cancel their subscription after just one or two months.
For more information on subscriptions, check out: http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/620/subscription-site-internet-business/