The subscription business model is one of the most profitable, scalable, and sustainable businesses you can start. In this comprehensive article, I will show you how you can create your own subscription business from scratch.

Quick Start Guide: (Click to Jump)

When looking for how to start a subscription business, one of the first things you will have to decide on is what niche you want to focus on. This means picking a problem, idea, or concept that will ultimately deliver value to some potential future clients which they would be willing to pay for. If you have already decided what niche or topic to focus on you can skip over this section and get started on the building section.

How to pick your unique business niche

1. What do you already know a lot about/ what is your area of expertise?

2. What problem do you want to help people with: financial, health, spiritual, educational, etc…

3. What niche or industry realistically has a market large enough, that you can make an income substantial enough that it is worth pursuing. Simply put, can your idea really generate enough money that you should go after it.

4. What current businesses exist and how successful are they. Choosing a niche with competitors means a strong market exists and you can differentiate yourself.

5. Keyword research is very valuable and you can discover how much people are searching for specific phrases such as “computer repair training” or any other term in Google KeyWord Planner.

Industry Analysis: Let’s take a look at what 2000 other subscription businesses are selling

A close look at this graph will give a good idea of what markets exist and also give you a good gauge of how many potential clients are in those fields. This doesn’t mean you necessarily have to choose one of these segments but it can definitely help inform your decision.

Once you discover your niche and who your business is targeting, you can better tailor your service or product offering. Answering this question as thoroughly as we can will ultimately give you a good understanding of your target audience and will help you better address their unique needs, wants, and frustrations.

In this article we go into much more detail on how you can select your unique niche:

How do you LITERALLY build your subscription business?

1. How to build your subscription product
2. How to build your subscription website
3. How to price your subscription website

Now that you have a specific subscription business idea in mind or at least know which niche you want to focus, we can get started on actually developing your business.

There are two main components for how to build a subscription service website. The first being, how to build your product or value offering and the second is how to build your website or platform to deliver your product/service

Building your Subscription Product:

When building your subscription product you will want to consider how you will deliver continuous value to your subscribers.

Some product formats include:

1. Video Training (Create Powerpoints and voiceover with Camtasia or other video tool)
2. Ebooks/PDFs (use Canva.com)
3. Worksheets
4. Copy and Paste Templates
5. Members Discussion Group (Community) (Slack, Discord, Private Facebook Groups)
6. Daily tips/alerts (Email or chat group)
7. Weekly video calls (Zoom, etc…)
8. Software Tools
9. Etc…

You of course do not need to have all of these and there can be many other examples but these are just some of the most common forms of products.

We have a much more in depth explanation of product development step-by-step in our advanced training course and also on our aticle  “Create a subscription business” which you can read here. https://profitpermonth.com/create-a-membership-site/

EXAMPLE:

Some businesses will naturally lend themselves to certain product formats, for example, if your subscription business provides stock advice and tips, you will most likely by sending out daily buy/sell alerts in the morning the market opens at 9:30 AM EST in your members group chat. You may also include video training on the psychology of being a stock trader and perhaps a PDF document with all the best stock discovery resources and tools.

How to Build a Subscription Service Website:

1. Build a Simple Website (We’ll show you how)
2. Lock your product pages behind a Subscription Paywall with Profit Per Month Member Management (PPM) https://join.profitpermonth.com/

Building a website for your subscription business will allow you to deliver your product to your clients. You will upload your product to your site and from there only paying subscribers will be able to access your specific product.

If you have any previous experience building websites it will be very easy to add a subscription element to your website. Even if you have never built a website before, it is as simple as drag and dropping a few images and setting just 2-3 pages which we will guide you through.

In order to add a subscribe option to your site rather than just a website you will have to add a subscription plugin to your site. You can simply do that with the Profit Per Month Member Management platform or simply PPM. You can select which pages you want to keep hidden or locked for only paying members by simply selecting them like this:

Once you have selected the pages where your content/product are uploaded and chosen to lock those pages, you can then create a plan and select a price to unlock them for paying subscribers only just like this:

With the PPM Member Management Tool you can easily:

• Track and see how many members you have
• Create multiple tiers of access with different prices
• Designate specific product access based on subscriber tier

How to Price your Subscription Offer:

Pricing is an important element of your business because you want to select a price which your clients will believe to be entirely worth the problem you are solving for them. A great way to get an idea of what reasonable pricing is, let’s take a look at the subscription industry as a whole.

Business to Consumer (B2C)

43.04% of memberships charge $25-$49 per month.
22.78% of memberships charge $15-$24 per month.
21.52% of memberships charge $1-$14 per month.

Business to Business (B2B)

44.64% of memberships charge $25-$49 per month.
23.32% of memberships charge $50-$99 per month.

Keeping this in mind we can see that recurring payments range mostly from $10-$100/m.

Selecting a price in this range is a safe choice and should help your subscription perform well. Keep in mind that pricing can be changed at any time. Your goal should be to reach a price point where, even though you may be getting slightly fewer clients, you have still maximized your monthly subscriber total payments value.

We have a very comprehensive article on pricing which I recommend you read when deciding on a price: How to Price your Membership Site

Getting people to subscribe is similar to any other sales process. You must simply inform your audience of your product by getting in front of them, convince them that you CAN help them by providing free valuable information, and then show them your subscription offer and ask for them to join. If you have given enough up-front, a percentage of people will be excited to subscribe!

The first step is getting in front of a cold audience (people who do not know about your business): You can do this with paid or free traffic sources:

FREE Traffic Sources:

• Free Content
• SEO Blog
• YouTube
• Social Media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc…)
• Email

PAID Traffic Sources:

• Ads
• Affiliates
• Partnership/Guest blogging

We have already covered how to generate traffic with each of these method in a detailed section of this article here: Create a Membership Site: Getting Clients

Once you have reviewed this article you should now have all the resources needed for how to start a subscription business. If you would like to get started right away, sign up for Profit Per Month below and our advanced course will teach you everything from how to make a monthly subscription website. From creating and developing product ideas, to building a subscription service website, to creating traffic generating content such as guides, blogs, and ADs.

With 20+ years of online subscription business, our goal is to help our clients succeed and scale when starting a subscription business online!

I hope this article has helped you understand exaxtrly how you an start your own online subscription business, and remember, we’re always here to guide you along the way with many more free guide, explanations, and resources!