9 Subscription Models You Can Start Today

The Design Startup Show

Hello. Hello, design starters. If you are trying to build and grow your service business as quickly as possible, and to also kind of help yourself to have that recurring income steady regular income, rather than a feast or famine way of getting business, the, the, one of the best ways that. I know it would be subscription model.

So like how I'm doing it. we are using a subscription model where people come to us for regular graphic work, where we turn out things like changes to social media designs, changes to landing page designs, nothing strategic strategy is done by the customers. And we will just. Move on with their requests.

And a lot of them need tons and tons of changes per graphic. So it's not like they don't know what they want, they know what they want, but they need a change in edits for the next campaign or the next project for their marketing. And when it comes to subscription model, there are also many different models.

Based on the book called the automatic customer by John Warrillow. So he also wrote the book built to sell. So he's that advocate for creating a business where you can scale and you can just sell like a product. So just let me go through, I just want to quickly run through this nine models that. John Warrillow has stated in his book and will be great if you go read that book.

And from there, you can also try to tweak your business towards certain models that work for your packages. Yeah. So the number one model is the network model. This network model, as the name already implies, if you have a lot of people subscribing. That's better for the subscribers themselves. Right? So, because with more people subscribing to it, the value goes up.

So it's a bit like you can say it's like Facebook, right? Because if I were to go into Facebook yet, nobody's using it. There's no point of me going there at all. So this is called the network model. And if, if, uh, you prefer the, um, Where you like to, you know, kind of create things and products and send to people where people are surprised with what you put in.

That's another model that's called the surprise box model. So this is things like, um, Singapore has a good one where, or getting vegetables are sent to homes. And when they open up the box, they're there not before they open up the box, they don't know what they're going to receive, but in know, they're going to get organic vegetables and they get this either every week or every month.

And then they open it and they will be surprised by things like they have corn, they have cabbage broccoli, but the next month they may have other things that can Cumbre or bring jaw, you know? So this is the surprise box subscription model you pay per month and you get that. Box where you don't know what you're gonna really get.

Yeah. So this is also very fun. And the other one you can do is also the, all you can eat model. It's a little bit like what I'm doing at meat, Anders, where it's like a buffet and you pay one amount per month and you get everything and lots of it. And it's like a library of things. For example, Spotify or Netflix, we have unlimited movies per month.

So it's a similar model. So you can do that for design as well as something like what I'm doing when it comes to design, you can do things like unlimited video designs, unlimited infographic designs. Yeah. So you can call that all you can eat model the other one. Wait, let me see how, how many have we got right here?

So we have got the network model, the surprise model, or you can eat model three models. So the fourth model, the fourth model is the private club model. And this is where you, you know, when you say private club, it sounds a little bit elite and special. So this can be like a club, right? Uh, so this is a pretty old school already.

It's not a new thing. And you have a yearly subscription, let's say where you can have access to this club and use the facilities. So that's the physical way of saying it, right? But otherwise you can do it like, um, this community of very special insider circle, uh, where only certain. Kind of people can access basically, of course you pay.

And definitely the amount is a premium amount and these people may not, may not be, let's say may not be entrepreneurs. They may be developers, or they may not be developers. They may be entrepreneurs or they may not the, um, employment. People, but they are startups. You know, it can be anything. There is no discrimination.

Here is more like just a certain kind of people, a group where they make it, make it really special. And this is usually associated to private clubs. But it is B to B. Business to business is also doable. And an example that John Warrillow has, uh, came up with is the, um, genius network created by Joe Polish.

So people pay $25,000 per year. You can be entrepreneurs, authors, innovators, and you meet you physically meet up every year to just talk about ideas and network. So, this is also like a network where there are people inside, but it becomes very private because not everybody can afford, not everybody can access.

All right. So that is, that is number four. So number five would be the front of the line subscription model funds offline is where it's something like Salesforce. All right. Based on John Marino's book, where all customers get basic level support, and someone will provide you with the restaurants over email within a certain day.

So if you don't pay for this subscription, you will not have that kind of support. It's a bit like in, even in our, yeah. And as a team, we also have two plans. So, so for design subscription, you can also have this where. The first plan can be a standard plan. So like I was as a standup plan, uh, customers will only communicate with us via email and nothing else has just email, no calls, no real time communication.

But if they go for the pro package, that is another level, they will pay a certain amount. That's more than a standard package and they have access to us and kind of like, uh, Premium level of support that are support, live, support, real-time support, and they can also book calls with us so that if they need a conversation, this plan can offer them this.

So it's a bit premium. So even in salesforce.com, it will be the same thing where some customer or customers get the basic level. And if you want something better, something faster, you go for the priority. Access where you pay a bit more, and this becomes the front of line subscription because you go to the front of line, right.

You're being brought to priority top other rather than the basic level. So this would be number five, where it is the fifth such friction mode. There's a fifth, um, Subscription model. So the next one will be the membership website model. So how does that work? The membership website model is if let's say, you know, if, if you know you, maybe you, you, yourself, as a person, you have an expertise in sort of website what perhaps wet floor, and you have a lot of expertise to share.

You can put it behind. A paywall and people pay on a monthly basis to get that unique content. So this is also not new because it's just membership website, right? You set up a website that has a membership to it. People want to see the content they just pay. So this is what a lot of people are doing because it's, it's not, it's not too difficult.

If you have that expertise already. You can just share knowledge by creating online courses as such and the next model with the simplified model. So this one is more for personal services because it's maybe less of B to B, but more of me to see. I think one I can think of is the cleaning cleaning of your, your home.

Um, Or even B to B, where there's carpet cleaning or homes where you need some packing technician, something that you can't do at home, new, you unable to handle, but you need to do that. You need to get that done every time. So you pay someone at a contract too, to kind of service your home staff air conditioner.

Anything electronic in your home on a, on an ongoing basis. So you don't really need to think about that. You know, like my air conditioner, sometimes I have to think about cleaning it, but you know, it's, it's tiring, right? To know when, and you don't want to do that yourself, then you can hire such service.

So it's also similar to how, you know, you, you can do such a model for your design service, and it's also similar to all you can eat. Where your simplify model may not be all of the things that you can do in design. You can simplify it down to only certain items like, like logo creation, form creation. So really small things within design.

And the next one will be the consumables. The consumables model is a little bit like the dollar shave club. Where it's a physical thing and people need to keep reuse. They can't really reuse for too long and they need to change like the Shiva. You know, you have to change the shaver on a very regular basis.

So in some of the design, I'm not sure how you can use this, uh, design, maybe physical design products, 3d 3d products. So, if you're in that space, you can use the consumables model where, you know, people may need to change it a few times or even ongoing, right. Printer, toner cartridges. So if you are offering 3d, 3d sort of cartridges, if you can call it Huggins, maybe that can work or, um, yeah.

Any physical item for your, for to provide design, help. In a ongoing way. The next model will be the peace of mind model. Well, I would say all the, all the models are peace of mind, but what this is is like insurance, when they're selling insurance premium, which, uh, if let's say, if you're installed your roof installer, you could offer a warranty program.

So customers will pay you some money each month to just. Give themselves that peace of mind when that when the roof starts leaking, you will come and fix it. So what I can think for design would be say, web design, maintenance, web host, design maintenance, or WordPress maintenance, where, you know, sometimes what press the plugin causes some error.

And then the website goes down and websites shouldn't be going down too often. And if it does, it will hurt the business. So I think this kind of peace of mind model can help. So there are with this nine transcription models by John Warrillow in the automatic customer. So just go and try reading it. It will help you a lot.

And so that's all for today. I will speak with you tomorrow. Bye.