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Subscription services provide a straightforward method for creators to make money from their efforts and generate passive, recurring revenue. This offering is ideal for software services, membership services, online course collections, coaching and consulting firms, and many others. 's e-commerce platform allows you to create and customize a subscription service in 4 simple steps.
How Does Subscription-Based Pricing Work?
How does the subscription model function? Instead of making a one-time payment for a product or service, customers will make recurring payment, usually to get access to a larger volume of content at an affordable price that the initial purchase cost. There are a few different forms of subscriptions that are available.
- Unlimited Subscription The most popular subscription form, unlimited subscriptions let customers enroll in an ongoing service that will continue to run until the client can cancel.
- Limited Subscriptions: Most often employed to develop payment plans, limited subscriptions are charged recurring fees for a limited amount of duration.
- Offer Free Trials. You may provide a trial for free to improve confidence when buying your product by letting interested customers try your subscription for free. What is the reason to offer a trial for free? Researchers at University of Washington University of Washington tested the effect of these promotional offers. The study concluded that seven-day free trials increase customer retention by 6.4% and increase the revenue of a subscription up to 7.91 %.
- Paid Trials: Perhaps you'd like to provide your customers the opportunity to experience your service at with a reduced price? The paid trial could be what you're looking for! This feature of paid trials can also work in reverse--letting users set a more expensive price upfront before gaining access to the option of a cheaper subscription cost. A higher initial trial fee is typically used by companies to cover the cost of setting up and onboarding labor.
supports all of these models of subscription to help the online seller create their ideal subscription service. Check out our step-by-step procedure for developing a recurring subscription model, either with or without a trial. You can also watch the video below as the co-founder of the company, Scott Moran, builds an online membership service that is mock-up to an online course within the field of guitar instruction.
Subscription Step 1: Add a New Product
The Products tab of your Account, click on the + New product button. Follow the on-screen guidance to fill out the form with your item's name and description.
Subscription Step 2: Recurring Pricing
In the Pricing Type drop-down menu, choose "Recurring." Next you can set the terms for your subscription.
- Subscription Price: Enter the default price of your subscription or membership service.
- The Recurring Period can be set to choose to have the subscription renew each week, every month, once a quarter, or every year. This time period is a reflection of how often the customers will be charged.
Subscription Step 3: Trial Optional Time
If you choose not to include a subscription trial, simply leave the trial Period toggle off. But, should you opt to include a trial, you will have two options:
- Free Trial: Switch the Trial Period toggle on and select Free Trial to give your customers access for free to your subscription. Then, you can choose how long customers can access this trial subscription before the first payment is processed.
- Paid Trial: Switch the Trial Period switch on and select Paid Trial with the cost of a trial period upfront. Enter the price you want to pay for your first trial and specify how long you would like the trial period to last.
Subscription Step 4: Create Product
Once you finalize your subscription details, click Create Product. Clicking this button will direct you to the dashboard for your product, where you can build your sales website, modify your product details, select your preferred payment methods before launching the subscription.
How Can I Manage My Customers' Subscriptions?
automatically generates a portal where users can manage their subscription. But, it puts you in the driver's seat for your business, permitting you to choose what subscription options you provide to your customers.
- Self-Cancellation feature: You are able to use the self-cancellation option if you want to allow subscribers to cancel their subscription anytime. This feature can save your time and effort when a customer wants to change or cancel their subscription.
- Subscription Saver: What happens if customers fail to update their payment information? 's Subscription Saver can help! It is included in Scale and Enterprise memberships, this function will immediately go involved to notify and recover customers whose subscription charges are declined by their payment source. The Subscription Saver helps to avoid losing subscribers (and revenue) and also avoid the hassle of sending an incessant email to your customers.
- Subscription Charge Reminder: You can choose whether or not to remind subscribers about the coming renewals of their memberships using's subscription charge reminder.