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Why subscriptions just don’t work for customers
Transactional businesses are good. Subscriptions are a recurring revenue stream where users decide that they want your product—in this case, content—and then continue to pay for it so long as the content is providing them with the information and/or entertainment that they want.
Jacob Cohen Donnelly • Subscriptions Is Perfectly Fine; But Community Can Give You More
In short, subscriptions are not a panacea. Price changes do not solve product/market fit on their own. But, if your product gets better with more usage, addresses a naturally recurring behavior, and has a potential “upgrade tier” of users, a subscription model could be very successful.
Alex Taussig • Firehose #182: 💰 Subscription addiction. 💰
Subscriptions are attractive because they are predictable, but not every product or service is a natural fit for subscription.
Alex Taussig • Firehose #182: 💰 Subscription addiction. 💰
But the appeal of subscriptions often hinges not on a better deal but on an escape from having to make deals. For many direct-to-consumer subscriptions, the absence of active purchasing decisions is the entire point. They replace more active forms of brand loyalty with a passive form in which the subscribed user is loyal to the point of effectively... See more
Drew Austin • Loyalty Tests — Real Life
The switch from “ownership that you purchase” to “access that you subscribe to” overturns many conventions. Ownership is casual, fickle. If something better comes along, grab it. A subscription, on the other hand, gushes a never-ending stream of updates, issues, and versions that force a constant interaction between the producer and the consumer. I
... See moreKevin Kelly • The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
And, in another sense, hardware companies that shift to a subscription model are pricing according to reality. If you buy something and use it every day for years, it makes sense that you’d pay for it as you use it rather than buy an uncertain amount of usage at one upfront price. The gradual shift to subscription-based hardware is just the economi... See more
Byrne Hobart • The Diff | Byrne Hobart | Substack
If subscriptions work, they allow companies to consolidate market share and drive out competitors before loyalty wears thin, the impotence of voice becomes apparent, and customers head for the exit. If this approach succeeds, as examples like Amazon suggest, customers might find that when their loyalty finally fades, there’s nowhere else to go.