Paid content subscription websites have enjoyed a lot of success in the last few years. This model emerged after the bloodbath of the dot com era. This only means that there were a large number of failures before the success stories started to stand out. The idea of presenting success stories is to provide you role models and to strengthen the premise, that if your idea is unique and properly executed, you will find it rewarding.
Here are some of the most popular success stories for subscription websites.One site that has been able to make the paid subscription model work -- and the site that is named the most in discussions as to whether the model can work elsewhere -- is the Wall Street Journal Online (www.wsj.com). Since launching in the fall of 1996, the site has consistently increased it subscriber base each quarter, making it the largest paid subscription site on the Internet.
For a yearly fee of $59, or $29 for those who subscribe to the print edition, users can obtain full access to the full text of The Wall Street Journal and updates throughout the day, as well as its archives. In addition, the contents of The Wall Street Journal Europe and The Asian Wall Street Journal are available. The site delivers a daily, personalized e-mail to more than 150,000 recipients, and has become one of the most popular sites for downloads to handheld computers. Today, about 600 000 subscribers pay to log on to the Wall Street Journal’s website and read its articles, analysis and opinion.
It required courage for an established media company to seek the medium of the Internet as early as 1996, and to make it a success. The content is no doubt available through the print media, but the Internet provides the wonderful features of access to archives and research. All this with powerful search capabilities! An entire library at the click of the mouse! Another feature that stands out is personalized access to notifications or alerts when content of your interest is published. It could be news about a Company you are tracking or an article about the latest report on the real estate market in Sunnyvale. You receive the article in your e-mail.
AmericanGreetings.com represents a tier of lesser-known winners in the feebased model. AmericanGreetings.com's (www.americangreetings.com) success is the sum total of careful business calculations, plus a century of card-making expertise, plus a seven-year journey through various Web content business models. Online via AOL since 1995 and then from the Web as well in 1996, the company started with the same fee-based model as its offline parent, American Greetings.
AmericanGreetings maintains a hybrid model. It offers some free greeting cards in all categories but many quality greeting cards are offered for a monthly subscription to members. Besides, AmericanGreetings also relies on its ad revenue. The site requires sustainable volume to maintain an ad inventory, but also converts a viable number of visitors to paying subscribers.
While tiered subscriptions and variable pricing models may work with other types of content, AmericanGreetings found that a single, uncomplicated offer was right for this niche. The company surveyed 5,000 users about their response to a feebased system, and all of their research said that a single subscription model worked best.
AmericanGreetings is one of the most successful examples of a shift from free to paid content. You might want to know why subscribers pay for e-greetings when there are so many sites that offer free greeting cards. The reason is quality and choice. If you perceive your time as valuable, then why would you like to spend enormous time searching the web to find just the right card for each occasion? The subscription fee is not too high so as to tempt users to continue trying the free route. Therein lies one of the strong pointers to formulating your business model. Keep the subscription level low and you will find many users cross the threshold from free to fee. Maintain exceptional quality and offer them the opportunity to save their valuable time.
eLibrary (www.elibrary.com) is a comprehensive digital archive for information seekers of all ages. Users can do business research, use it for homework, get background materials for term papers, find out about both current and historical events, and more, all in one vast database designed for both depth of content and simplicity of interface. With its one-stop research access, subscribers ask questions in plain English, and eLibrary searches a billion words and thousands of images and quickly returns the information requested.
eLibrary aggregates hundreds and hundreds of full-text periodicals, nine international newswires, classic books, hundreds of maps, thousands of photographs, as well as major works of literature, art and reference. eLibrary is for anyone who needs to research information quickly and affordably, whether at work, at home, or at school. The service allows the user to determine which resource categories (such as newspapers, maps, books, pictures, etc.) are searched.
Ever since it was formed, eLibrary has enjoyed success with its paid content model. It gives out more specific results as compared to a search engine.
Information research is one of the strongest content categories when it comes to subscription websites. Business research, Company research, financial research, Legal research and all other kinds of data are very much sought after. Specialized online databases have existed from the early years of the Internet and Computerized databases even before that. The Internet has only lowered down costs and brought a proletarian character to it.
Founded in 1995, Salon Media Group is a leading new media company that produces an award winning Internet site, www.Salon.com, as well as two subscription-based online communities, The WELL and Table Talk. Salon logged 3.8 million unique visitors in July 2001, as audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Companies that have advertised on Salon include IBM, Lexus, PBS, Universal Studios, Hewlett-Packard, Ford, Sprint, Absolut, Powell's Books, Discover Card and Intel.
Salon Premium, the company's content-based subscription service launched in late April 2001 has generated over 50,000 of Salon Media Group's 65,000 subscriptions. Salon Premium provides subscribers with exclusive access to most of Salon.com's news and politics coverage, political columnists and additional content from its People and Sex sites.
Salon Premium also provides subscribers with special services such as the ability to download a day's worth of Salon content to their hard drives for offline reading, in either Adobe PDF or HTML text formats. The Well and Table Talk, Salon's community forums, allow users to view and post messages in moderated environments. Salon's subscription fees range from $6 per month and $30 per year for Salon Premium subscriptions to $180 per year for the highest priced Well subscription.
‘Community sites’ is another prominent category of subscription sites. If the membership of such a site grows and members find it valuable to share experiences and interact with each other, it would be offering an added benefit to members. People often want to hear from others who may have their experiences to narrate and gain valuable insights from these. Or you may just be interested in the opportunity of networking and meeting with like-minded persons for business or pleasure.
Carfax.com empowers consumers with access to detailed histories on used vehicles. Visitors to the Web site need only enter a valid Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) and for less than $20 they are instantly connected to important information that could impact their decision to purchase a car - information like salvage, flood and fire reports, ownership changes, liens, odometer fraud, and major accidents.
As the leading provider of vehicle history information, www.Carfax.com serves consumers with more than 1.2 billion records on approximately 300 million vehicles. This massive information repository is collected from a growing list of information providers including Departments of Motor Vehicles of various States, emissions inspection stations and private fleet management companies.
CarFax is one of the most successful subscription models. Its customer base has constantly been on the increase since the last few years.Here is an example of two important aspects that can lead you to develop your own successful business model – identify a niche segment where there is a pressing need for guidance, advise or support and which relates to thousands of persons, and leverage the power of Information technology and the Internet to build a repository of content that would be hard or impossible for the next competitor to emulate. This is also an example of the ‘early mover’.
eDiets.com, Inc. is the largest subscription-based online diet, fitness and counseling network. Founded in 1996, www.eDiets.com offers online subscription-based weight-loss programs using proprietary software to generate customized diet programs. The programs are designed based upon individual members' personal goals, food preferences and lifestyles. Over 1.2 million consumers have purchased memberships since 1997 and over 13 million opt-in subscribers currently receive the company’s leading proprietary bi-weekly health and wellness newsletter.
For a monthly fee, eDiets.com creates custom diet plans based on information provided in response to a comprehensive personal profile questionnaire. eDiets.com has been honored with the Forbes "Best of the Web" 2002 rating for the fitness and nutrition category by Forbes magazine, as well as one of the "Best of The Web" in the magazine’s Summer, 2001 issue.
eDiets.com is ranked as a top 500 Digital Media site since its debut on the Media Metrix list in March, 2000 and, according to Technology in Practice, in August 2002, Media Metrix ranked eDiets.com as the 3rd most trafficked General Health site on the Internet with over 4.3 million unique visitors, which they define as "the number of users who visited the Web site at least once in the given month (unique visitors are counted only once)."
Personal improvement and enhancement – both physical and professional – is uppermost in the minds of the young and the not so young as well. Thus there are several self-help sites in the area of fitness, health management, weight loss programs, even beauty and grooming. Numerous subscription sites have sprung up for fitness and diet programs – but do remember that only those will survive and succeed that offer something unique and interesting.
ChangeWave Research (CWR), a division of Phillips Investment Resources LLC, is an investment research publisher powered by an intelligence network of thousands of accredited and organized front-line professionals. ChangeWave Research packages and delivers market moving invest-able research to two main constituencies (self-directed investors and institutional buy-side portfolio managers) via traditional subscription advisory services. CWR publishes ChangeWave Investing, ChangeWave ProTrader and the ChangeWave Hedge Fund Briefing for individual investors. The weekly WaveWire is a free e-mail newsletter distributed to over 200,000 investors.
ChangeWave was ranked as one of the top 25 Web destinations for 2002 consumer online content revenue and No.5 in the business content category, according to the Online Publishers Association's (OPA) Paid Online Content U.S. Market Spending Report. It has successfully adopted the paid content subscription model with an ever-increasing customer base.
It is not just the general non-business users that subscribe to paid content sites. In fact the first thrust this model received was from business users. Thus even Portfolio managers of well-known investment funds subscribe to content sites that offer them valuable information.
TheStreet.com Network provides individual and professional investors, with timely, to-the-point financial news and analysis you can use to succeed in today's markets. It is updated before, during and after the bell by the largest independent financial newsroom on the Web. TheStreet.com is a free website that works as a guide to Wall Street. However, TheStreet.com launched RealMoney.com a couple of years ago, which is a subscription site for active investors and market enthusiasts. It has been a success ever since, generating most of TheStreet.com’s revenue.
RealMoney.com offers real-time analysis and unprecedented access to awardwinning columnists. It provides up-to-the-minute commentary and analysis on many industry sectors, real-time diary of market observations and trading strategies, offered by a host of professionals they assemble each day, and a portfolio tracker amongst other services.
This is an example of a business model that has worked for many. You start with a free information site, analyze your visitors, study what they require the most, identify that ‘extra’ that they wouldn’t mind paying for and introduce a premium site (or a section within the same site) that offers exclusive benefits and privileges such as access to professional advice from a large number of experts.
With a paid subscription base of more than 550,000, Ancestry.com is the third largest paid subscription site on the Internet behind ConsumerReports.org and the Wall Street Journal Online.
Ancestry.com, according to Media Metrix is among the 10 fastest growing sites and it ranks among the top 20 in total page views according to
Nielsen/NetRatings. Ancestry.com is the leading provider of private Web sites for families, where family members can share photos and news, participate in private voice and text chats, and maintain a calendar of family events. It is the premier online resource for tracing family history, where visitors can discover their roots by searching more than 600 million names. It hosts more than 100,000 free family history oriented message boards that allow users to connect and share information with others who are researching similar family lines.
While most successful subscription sites are an outgrowth of major offline brands, Ancestry.com has found success with the subscription model by offering users increased value over the duration of a subscription. Currently, the site offers in excess of 600 million searchable records in 2,500 databases. The company continues to add new databases and other family history information to Ancestry.com every business day.
Besides its subscription area, Ancestry.com offers over half of its content free to all Internet users. The site also features exclusive holdings, historic maps, publications from leading family history experts, genealogy news, genealogy products and "how to" lessons.
Founded in 1994, US SEARCH is an Internet-based trust and risk management services company, supplying consumer and enterprise clients with Web-enabled location, verification and screening services using its proprietary intelligent software platform.
A leader in finding people, US SEARCH has extended its employment screening and background check product lines to provide identity verification services and fraud prevention tools to Global 2000 companies. US SEARCH aims to provide its customers the right information to make faster, safer, smarter decisions. US SEARCH provides location and verification services to both consumers and enterprise clients including identity verification, individual location, criminal record checks, employment and education verifications, professional reference checks, credit and motor vehicle record checks, drug screening, and pre-employment verification services. US SEARCH, has over 200 blue chip enterprise customers for whom it provides employment screening and background checks. This number is fast growing, making US SEARCH a highly successful subscription website.
The Sporting News, a Wired World Company, is a leading US sports media company reaching some 18 million people weekly. The Sporting News’s content is available through many sources, including a weekly magazine, books, a radio network and stations, Web site, wireless devices and iTV. Having debuted in 1886, The Sporting News is the nation's oldest sports publication. The website, which provides information to subscribed members, was launched a few years ago. Its customer base has been increasing ever since.
www.SportingNews.com has become one of the Web's most successful premium sports content sites. It provides live information and news about all the sporting events throughout US and the world.
Sports, leisure and entertainment are amongst the leading categories in the arena of paid content businesses. Although this site is an example of a traditional publisher graduating to include the Internet to add to its brick and mortar model, there are several others that have taken birth only on the net.
ArtToday.com, Inc. has been in the graphic-content publishing business since
1988. Originally a software company, ArtToday shifted its focus to the Internet in
1996, offering online subscriptions for clipart, web graphics, photos, and fonts. Since then, the company has developed a network of design-oriented websites that provide graphics users with royalty-free content at affordable prices.
The company maintains a network of graphics related websites including Photos.com (http://www.photos.com/), ClipArt.com (http://www.clipart.com/), Graphics.com (http://www.graphics.com/), FlashComponents.com (http://www.flashcomponents.com/), RebelArtist.com (http://www.rebelartist.com/) and more. ClipArt.com is the largest subscription-based graphics resource on the web with over 2,500,000 clipart images, animations, photos, fonts, and sounds. ArtToday.com has established a tradition of providing the professional and home user with innovative technology and easy to use, high quality software products at affordable prices.
This is yet another example of a site that is largely used by professionals, though amateurs use it as well. If a graphic element or an illustration is available at a nominal cost, why re-invent the wheel?
There are dozens of success stories and sure and certain, there would be dozens of failures. The web is a battlefield with victors and the vanquished. Where you want to be depends on what you can learn from these models and success stories.