Hi Ron,

Wow, thanks, great post!

> I just wrote an article about subscription
> websites in last months issue of The
> Business Fastlane." My research found a
> number of them...doing very well. Many of
> them are actually have a paid ezine/website
> combination.

> Monique Harris has an excellent one:

> sellyourbrainfood.com/

> Try daytrading-university.com

> Another one is is cheapsk8.com

> They have over 13,000 subscribers at
> $18/year-do the math!

Thanks for these, I didn't know about the last two, and I hadn't looked at Monique Harris's site in a while, but as Gordon has pointed out, she's a great internet success story!

> The key to most of these is they have a
> narrow niche. Terry Dean and a few others
> might be able to succeed with the topic of
> "make money on the net" but soon
> that topic will probably be saturated from
> everyone else jumping on it just like it is
> with free ezines. Also choosing a narrow
> niche is easier because there isn't so much
> free information available that you are
> competing with.

YES, this is what I've been noticing too!

I started to think, WHY was the Wall Street Journal making profits with the subscription model, while an eminent newspaper like the New York Times failed with the same model?

I believe the reason is because of specialization.... The WSJ is more specialized in a specific niche than the NYT. A lot of the information in the NYT can also be read in your local city newspaper, or from various other newspaper web sites around the world.... That's less true of the WSJ.

And as you point out, whatever info you want to sell on the net, to some degree you are competing with what's out there which is free. The more specialized and niche targeted your offer is, the less likely it is that someone will be offering the same info out there already for free....

The other successful subscription web sites seem to be the same. For example, www.davidbowie.com and www.hanson.net are tightly targeted at David Bowie and Hanson fans respectively. People who fall out of these narrow niches probably won't be very interested. However, those who are PASSIONATE about these pop stars are more than willing to pay a monthly subscription to interact with them to some degree...!

I think it's probably important to offer something unique which people can't get for free already.... Although I'm not 100% sure that www.stratfor.com is profitable, I strongly suspect that they are.... They are also tightly targeted for those who want world "intelligence" information (more than just "news"). Another web site I suspect is probably profitable is www.janesonline.com , which again targets a highly specific niche....

I LIKED your example of www.cheapsk8.com - it shows that (contrary to much popular wisdom) that you can make money from that particular target market.... It just needs to be a cheap subscription. :)

> The best thing about these is that since you
> have no printing, shipping or other product
> hard costs is that you can be profitable
> with just a small subscriber base-even 100
> subscribers can produce $2,000+ a month.

> It's a great model.

Thanks Ron! Those were great insights.... :)

- Dien