What Are Subscription Networks?

Subscription networks are very similar to advertisement networks (like Google AdSense), just for the subscription economy. They work by connecting subscribers (instead of advertisers) with content creators without the need of a direct business relation between the two.

The Problem with Stand-Alone Subscriptions

Have you ever tried selling a subscription for your content to your visitors? It is HARD!

Even large organizations such as newspapers have a hard time producing enough content to provide an attractive value proposition. If you look at the broader marker, the only widely successful content subscription providers are the truly gigantic content aggregators like Netflix that offer unfathomable amounts of content.

So what can small, medium, or even large sized content creators do to get a share of the subscription pie? Team up!

Benefits of Networking

Let’s face it: Even though I’m sure you create some amazing content, it’s unlikely it will be enough to attract many paid subscribers. And when you consider the work and cost of implementing, operating and supporting subscriptions the return on investment is likely not going to be great.

Networks solve both the overhead and the value proposition problems.

The overhead is shared between network participants, enjoying the same economies of scale that the giants do. Adless takes care of everything for a fixed percentage of subscription revenues, which benefits you with no up-front investments, better unit economies and most importantly; more time and focus to create amazing content 🤩

As the network grows, the value proposition becomes absolutely unrivaled; imaging a subscription that provides access to paid content on thousands of websites. No more paywalls everywhere. You might only visit a handful of them, but the freedom not to decide up front what content you want to consume for the next month and the joys and just seamlessly browse the Internet is pretty enticing.

How It Works

By partaking in a network, content creators can provide subscribers with their content according to the terms of the network and receive a revenue share based on consumption. They can even offer their advertisement space to a subscription network instead of an advertisement network and receive a revenue share for NOT showing ads!

Adless manages subscription networks that you are very welcome to join if you want to try it out. Adless even provide all the tooling you need as well as support for free.