20 year old starting a subscription-based business

[NickS]

Hi everyone,


Thanks for reading my thread. I’m a 20 year old “wantrepreneur” who is looking to start his own business. Still in college, which is bad because it eats my time, but the upside is I have no living costs of my own, which allows me to focus on my money-making efforts without fear of bankruptcy.

I have had one other project – a Wordpress blog – which didn’t take off unfortunately. The failed venture gave me some technical knowledge however, and I’m confident I can take this business on a profitable path.


Part of why I ditched my previous project is because of some Fastline insights: it failed the command of Entry, Control, and Time. A bad score.


This idea I’m having will hopefully score better: it’s a subscription based business (like the Dollar Shave Club) that delivers monthly a variety of flavors of a consumable with an active, buying, hip audience.


First of all – I am in Europe. The subscription-box type of business model is starting to emerge around these parts, but mostly the market remains untapped. This is where I, hopefully, can fill a Need and provide value through delivering quality samples and rare, unheard-of flavors. Once the subscription model is gaining traction, I will hopefully be able to “ride the wave” and profit from being one of the first of its kind. I have observed other such businesses do very well btw!


Still with me?


Tomorrow I will buy a domain name. I’m on the fence about the name. I’m tempted to go with an exotic TLD to show a trendy, current image. Something like: name.club . Or should I go with nameclub.com anyway? Does it matter at all?


I know how to set up a website with Wordpress. There are several pieces of software designed specifically to create subscription-based businesses, but at 20 dollars/month this won’t make me profitable until I hit a certain number of subscribers. I will probably go with WooCommerce and associated plug-ins and see how that works out – once I gain subscribers I can upgrade to specific software. I’ve considered even doing it manually for the first few subscribers (get them to pay me via Paypal and manage everything offline with Excel). Thoughts on this?


I’ve already crunched some numbers through Excel, and I have a very accurate estimate of costs and profits involved. Still an estimate, however!


Things I need to do:

· Figure out how much packaging + branding of boxes would cost

· Figure out how much I can expect to pay for top notch design work for the website


My game plan is as follows:

1. Order a tiny amount of product, boxes, and other miscellaneous items (stickers, flyers) that get sent to customers

2. Get the website up and running

3. Ask my family to sign up, get feedback, and refund them – this is basically an exercise to manage this operation on a micro-scale

4. Once everything runs smooth, offer subscriptions at half the price for the first x amount of subscribers, and offer bonuses via “refer a friend” campaigns

5. Reach out to my personal network

6. Hopefully by this point I have at least some subscribers and I’m able to turn a profit (however small) which I can spend on advertising and reaching out to influencers

7. Get feedback, adjust, improve & repeat.


Right now I have some exams I have to get through, but I plan on working on the website on the side. Once the exams are over, it’s go time.


Please feel free to share your thoughts, I’d very much appreciate it.

 

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[NickS]

Hi everyone,

I've been looking at all the different software options for handing subscription sign-ups and payments, however they are all pretty expensive (for my standards...)

Anyone care to chime in with their opinion or experience?

I've been looking at Shopify + ReCharge (a plug in) but this amounts to nearly 50 dollars/month, plus the cut they take off any sales. WooCommerce is free on a per-month basis but has a huge upfront cost (in the hundreds). Then there are a few softwares specifically for subscription-based business....

If everything is going to be expensive I might as well go for the best quality (both for my and customer's sake) so can anyone advise me the best billing, sign-up and payment software for a subscription-based business model?

Thanks in advance.

 

[theag]

the best billing, sign-up and payment software for a subscription-based business model?

Custom programmed + proper merchant account.

I'm currently building a recurring product on www.pactas.com which is pretty cool. Will cost me mid 4 figures / month once everything is running, but you gotta spend money to make money .

 

[jason91]

Custom programmed + proper merchant account.

I'm currently building a recurring product on www.pactas.com which is pretty cool. Will cost me mid 4 figures / month once everything is running, but you gotta spend money to make money .

That website's load speed is insane O_O

 

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[theag]

That website's load speed is insane O_O

Loads in under 1sec for me :/. They target zeh German market though, so maybe they limit speed for yankees on purpose

 

[NickS]

Custom programmed will be way too expensive for a start-up. I'll probably end up having a custom built one anyway, but for the moment it's just not cost effective. I appreciate the suggestion though.

I've been thinking of Cratejoy and Subbly. I'll probably just pull the trigger on Cratejoy and stop mentally masturbating over this... Anyone have any feedback concernin these softwares?

Loads in under 1sec for me :/. They target zeh German market though, so maybe they limit speed for yankees on purpose

He probably meant that. It's insanely fast

 

[jason91]

Custom programmed will be way too expensive for a start-up. I'll probably end up having a custom built one anyway, but for the moment it's just not cost effective. I appreciate the suggestion though.

I've been thinking of Cratejoy and Subbly. I'll probably just pull the trigger on Cratejoy and stop mentally masturbating over this... Anyone have any feedback concernin these softwares?


He probably meant that. It's insanely fast

Yeah that's what I meant lol super super fast

 

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[theag]

Custom programmed will be way too expensive for a start-up. I'll probably end up having a custom built one anyway, but for the moment it's just not cost effective. I appreciate the suggestion though.

Well, you were asking for the best solution .

I think Cratejoy is solid, though is never used it. There was a big thread on reddit from some guy with a subscription business who used them and recommended highly. Here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entreprene..._inner_workings_of_a_subscription_box_company

Depeding on your business model I'd use that or WooCommerce with the subscriptions+stripe addon.

 

[Legitimate]

Try Restrict Content Pro ($35 with promo code: WINNINGWP) or Paid Memberships Pro (free but must pay for support)

 

[Ubermensch]

Custom programmed + proper merchant account.

I'm currently building a recurring product on www.pactas.com which is pretty cool. Will cost me mid 4 figures / month once everything is running, but you gotta spend money to make money .

Lay those bricks!

Calculated moves.

Much more logical and rational than just gambling your money away.

It can be a fine line, because of the stakes involved. However, one is sound business practice, and based on the most powerful weapon in existence: the logical, rational, conscious mind.

The other is literally, by definition, mental illness; a disease of the mind.

 

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[BlakeIC]

op, ask yourself this

do people really need/want a subscription to this kind of product?

I saw that you mentioned flavors so chances are it is an edible or spray/freshener of some kind

 

[iAmAttila]

You need to test the market before you walk the walk.

 

[Iqen]

Use Stripe as your payment processor. They have an option for recurring payments. You can have a free trial if you like as well.

PayPal also has recurring payment functionality.

From there you would use a connector like Zapier to communicate to yourorder/inventory manager. Since I'm using my subscription for a newsletter, I use Zapier to send new customer information between stripe and Getresponse, my email provider.

Good luck!

 

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[NickS]

Thanks for replying, everyone.

With regards to payment processing, I'll go with Cratejoy + Stripe. I can always change but I read very good reviews about both the software and customer service.

You need to test the market before you walk the walk.

How would I do that? Set up the website, pay for some ads, and when people sign up, give them an "Out of stock" message?

op, ask yourself this

do people really need/want a subscription to this kind of product?

I saw that you mentioned flavors so chances are it is an edible or spray/freshener of some kind

I believe so. As I mentioned this business model is active in America already, and more or less the exact same service I am offering is working well enough over there to justify the existence of multiple competitors... Which means there surely is demand.

 

[Roland]

How would I do that? Set up the website, pay for some ads, and when people sign up, give them an "Out of stock" message?

I am not sure that I fully understand what is it you are selling but anyway, to test a physical product, I would put in for sale on ebay. Set it to the minimum price you would need it to go and see how high people are bidding, then either you can deliver quickly when the auction finishes or you cancel it just before it finishes. Test done, you will see whether people are interested or not and at what price.

 

[NickS]

I am going to set up a small website.

1. Nearly all attention should go to the "enter your e-mail here" field. The goal is to build a list to test the market for my idea.
2. The area below will be used to familiarize people with the idea of a subscription-based business.

I don't want to roll with Cratejoy before I gauged interest properly. So, any Wordpress themes that are good with what I need? Wordpress is the only thing I have experience with, but only with blogging. I'm looking at a mostly one-page website here, which purpose is to collect e-mails of would-be customers.

(if you're wondering why this took so long - I had to struggle through university exams and take care of school-work first)

 

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[rick harris]

Hi everyone,

I've been looking at all the different software options for handing subscription sign-ups and payments, however they are all pretty expensive (for my standards...)

Anyone care to chime in with their opinion or experience?

I've been looking at Shopify + ReCharge (a plug in) but this amounts to nearly 50 dollars/month, plus the cut they take off any sales. WooCommerce is free on a per-month basis but has a huge upfront cost (in the hundreds). Then there are a few softwares specifically for subscription-based business....

If everything is going to be expensive I might as well go for the best quality (both for my and customer's sake) so can anyone advise me the best billing, sign-up and payment software for a subscription-based business model?

Thanks in advance.

Payolee offers subscription and recurring payments. You might want to check them out.

http://www.payolee.com/recurring-payments