I've studied 15 subscription websites. They are all professional, focused, extremely high value. I'm starting a new site, unprecedented (our database is a $20,000 project, alone) with similar value. I have several revenue streams including products for sale, paid links, adverts. So I don't need the subscription except it would be unfortuneate not to include it if it were possible. The site is not developed entirely, so there's time left to evaluate. We don't need more than a $20/yr fee to make a subscription worthwhile. I'm wondering what some key considerations would be for determining to do / not to do the subscription.
Any subscription model works best if you have free content that begs for other content. However, that other content sits behind a pay wall. I've had quite a bit of success with this model...though I think a lot of it comes from proving that you know what you're talking about/doing.
Paid links and ad revenue will come to only to 'not much' when it comes to meeting your costs (which you say more than $20000) so you will have to charge for membership/subscription etc. That is the way to go for to recoup your investment in the project. Hard part is finding customers and first building a email list which you can sell to.
internetmarketingiq the fee is for full access to a product library; comprehensive to an industry, not found elsewhere, and a superior search mechanism. JacobNeldson yes - free info, to a point. more detailed if you pay. has to be some clue about data quality, etc. yes, i think you have to prove yourself. the site will have very convincing copy and format... but some subscription sites's owners are celebrities, of 1 kind or another. i will try to get someone to endorse me, or something. add some sizzle. Traffic-Bug I didn't say it, but luckily that $20,000 is exchanged for equity, not cash! [besides seo, i'll personally target relevant websites and so forth to find interested visitors: so we'll have search, and non-search generated traffic] I must say, I have some interesting traffic ideas, but it's still gonna be a haul to get 12,000 visitors monthly. monthly searches for our product area in google/msn/bing = 1.1 million. not a bad foundation. that's total us retail sales = $5 billion for these products (capital-intensive consumer items).