Predicting when money comes into your pockets can be difficult when you don’t have a steady source of income. As a content creator, entrepreneur or freelancer, it is natural to experience fluctuations in the demand for your services. For productivity gurus for instance, January can be peak time for consultations on how to make the most of the year, but by April, it might be hard to make any sales from such services. This is why subscription services are so important. 

A subscription, or membership is a system where customers pay to gain access to a product or service on an ongoing, scheduled basis. This could be weekly, monthly, annually, or biannually depending on needs and preferences. Subscription services are a great way to make profits and regularize your income, and you need some strategies to succeed at it. 

In this article, we’ll teach you how to set up a subscription service, the types of subscription services that exist, the right ones to use, and the right places to use them, along with tips on what to look out for. 

Before we get into the types of subscription services that exist, there are some key factors that must be in place before you can set up a successful subscription service. So before you proceed, you need to assess your consistency, customer base and how you manage your infrastructure.

1. Be consistent

You need to ask yourself this question: will I be able to consistently create a product or deliver a service? The importance of this question cannot be overstated, as establishing and succeeding as a subscription service provider depends on consistency. If you cannot deliver your product or service on schedule as promised, people will unsubscribe, and you’ll lose valuable time and effort.

Think long term: will you be able to keep it up two years from now without burning out? What steps can be taken to prevent that or make things easier for you, without cutting corners? By answering these questions, you can brainstorm ideas that will help you execute your service better, like hiring employees or using new technologies to automate some repetitive tasks.

Prepare yourself for the long game by writing down every idea and strategy that comes to mind and implementing them in your work. 

2. Know your customer base

Next, you’ll want to consider whether your customer base will benefit from your subscription service. There is no clear cut answer on whether a subscription service is suited for your audience, which is why you’ll need to look out for hints you can draw conclusions from. 

Let’s say you have customers who constantly re-order from you, a skill you can teach, and that takes a long period of time for mastery, like community building, copywriting or drawing, clients that are always looking for new products/services, or potential buyers who are unsure of what to purchase from the extensive collection of products in your shop. These hints serve as good indicators of whether or not you should have a subscription service. If it’ll prove beneficial to your customer base, then, by all means, introduce it, but if not, then you probably shouldn’t. 

Read: How to Easily Create a Successful Coaching Membership Site

3. Get great subscription tools

Lastly, you should ask yourself about the tools to use for your subscription service. Managing everything by spreadsheet or filling out orders by hand can quickly grow tedious as more people subscribe, so you might have to invest in tools that automate some parts of the process for you. Selar is a great tool for managing a subscription service. Using it can remove some weight off your shoulders.  

Furthermore, pay attention to details. If you notice your chosen infrastructure has some issues try to fix them otherwise they will only magnify as you get more subscribers. At the end of the day, you want to ensure that you have efficient technology, infrastructure and good control of said technology, so you won’t be running a business while dealing with these issues. 

Which Subscription Services Should You Use? 

Subscription services come in different shapes and sizes. With all this variety, selecting the right type of subscription service might be quite a challenge. To decide on the right subscription service for you, you need to follow three steps: 

1. Choose a product or service.
2. Decide on your offers/packages.
3. Select a platform.

1. Choose a Product or Service

This is the first and arguably most important step when deciding on which subscription service to use. You need to figure out what product you would sell, or what service you want to provide.  People use subscription services for various reasons: from men’s clothing, food, entertainment, and fitness kits, to ebooks, there are myriads of options out there. 

If you are looking at providing a product, it’s important also to consider its reusability. Beauty products like moisturizers are great for a subscription service because they need to be replaced regularly. By going after reusable items, you add value to your customers’ lives by making things easier for them with a subscription. This convenience will make them more reluctant to cancel, as they’ll be enjoying the benefits that come with your service.

Furthermore, you want to be passionate about what you are selling, as your passion can also carry you through the hard times you may encounter down the line. 

SavageXFenty is an example of an unlikely product that has a membership/subscription plan. The lingerie brand charges a monthly fee of 60 dollars for exclusive perks members can get access to. So inasmuch as you should consider reusability, pay more attention to your audience and the demand for your product. Anything can be sold with a subscription service as long as enough people want it. 

Beyond products, services can also be sold by subscription. If you are anywhere near the internet, chances are that you may have seen or heard about Netflix. Here, customers pay monthly for access to entertaining movies and shows. Examples of other services that can be sold include cleaning, laundry, and food services, health and wellness services. 

Digital subscriptions also can be a great avenue for gaining income. Sometimes, courses don’t provide enough support for clients, so a subscription-based membership service will be more adequate for sharing knowledge and providing support. Subscriptions exist for everything from membership clubs to exclusive trainings and more. Here are some use cases below: 

2. Decide on your Offers/Packages

After choosing what to sell, you need to decide how you want to organize your offers/packages. This would include choosing the payment frequency and the contents of your subscription package or plan. 

1. How to choose the frequency of your payment.

There’s no hard-set rule for choosing on your payment frequency. While many services like Netflix, i-Fitness, Apple, opt for a monthly payment option, you can decide to craft something that works best for you. 

There are merits to the monthly service option. For one, it gives content creators and small business owners a way to earn consistently. It gives the illusion of salaried payment and encourages planning, and it is also an excellent tool to generate engagement. With the right marketing tactics, you can build a community around your product or service and keep people excited about the next package or update.

For instance, as a YouTuber, you can drive attention to your Selar subscription by advertising exclusive videos and projects that’ll keep people talking about it, making it easier for you to sell to them. 

Nevertheless, a monthly subscription service may not work for everybody. Let’s say, you’re a small business owner sending packages of new, beautifully designed clothes to your customers every month. You would need to work constantly to ensure you deliver your product on time, and this may lead to burnout, especially if the creation process proves to be time-consuming. This is why you need to decide on what works for you. 

2. How to choose the right content for your subscription package/plan. 

Choosing the right content for your subscription package/plan is entirely up to you, but there are general guidelines that you can follow. For services, you want to tier your subscriptions into plans that offer different privileges. Here, the pricier plans will offer more privileges while the basic ones would still offer some benefits, though not to the level of the premium plans. This way, users are encouraged to pay for the pricier subscription plans to get more access and more benefits. 

A great example is Selar’s subscription services. The Selar pro plan has everything in the starter pack, along with a lot more benefits. The Turbo plan has all the benefits on the Selar pro plan, with a lot more perks.

3. Select a Platform

Lastly, you should select a platform suitable to your goals and what you want to achieve. Of course, there are options available on the internet, so feel free to look into them, as we’ll be discussing three in this article:

1. Etsy

Etsy is an online, global marketplace with a keen focus on unique, creative goods. Here, you can find everything from toys, collectibles art, vintage furniture, jewelry, crafts, and so much more! It supports a variety of payment methods, offers several features that simplify the selling process, and has a wonderful community, so it is a top pick for content creators and small business owners looking to sell handmade subscription products.

2. Patreon

Patreon is a membership platform that connects audiences to their favorite content creators, authors, or artists. It allows subscribers or fans to support you financially through monthly plans you can set up and is a wonderful way to make money off your passion. 

3. Selar

Selar is an e-commerce platform created for creators looking to sell their knowledge. You can easily selll products online with this user-friendly platform, especially if you are offering digital products or services. Creators use Selar for its subscription services because it has lots of unique features, some of which include: 

• Selar allows you to easily set up your unique custom-branded domain name eg; mybrandname.com
• With Selar, you can easily set up membership tiers and frequency when creating your subscription plan. 
• It helps you manage all your customer information with ease, including sending emails directly from your Selar dashboard to your customers.
• Selar accepts payment in more than 15 currencies [NGN, USD, GHS, ZAR, KES, TZS, GBP], which can be very helpful if you’re looking to target audiences across different geographical locations. 

If you’re looking to create a subscription service on Selar, watch this video.

Finally, 

Selling your products and services via a subscription plan can be a great way to ease out the financial burdens that come with irregular income, connect more with audience and build loyalty, and fill gaps that traditional digital products/services like e-books and courses are unable to fill. 

With a subscription service, your income becomes more predictable. This not only saves you a lot of stress but also empowers you to take advantage of more opportunities that may come your way. Now that you have all this information on your fingertips, create a subscription service today.