When businesses look to generate tons of revenue, they usually think of a hugely successful product launch. That initial surge of sales can make any marketer’s mouth water, but after that first launch, you’ll see the natural progression (or regression) of success trickle down to a slow.

To maintain the profits, marketers will begin to employ other tactics like:

• Retargeting
• Cross-Marketing
• Upselling as an OTO

And while all of these tactics are a great way to keep your product relevant, the fact of the matter is that you simply won’t see the wave of sales that you got on that first launch. We combat this by releasing new products on a consistent basis, but that’s still a rollercoaster ride for your profits.

If you really want to boost your revenue in a reliable, consistent, and profitable way, then it’s time to start focusing on recurring subscriptions.

Consider the paycheck of a waiter or waitress versus someone with a salary. The salaried worker can rely on a steady paycheck every week, regardless of how much time they dedicate to the job. A waiter or waitress can earn a killing on a busy weekend, but come off-season, they may need to pick up a second job to maintain their income.

Now consider a recurring subscription product. You’re investing the time and effort to continually push out great content that your subscribers will continue to love and, thus, continue to pay for. But you can rely on that steady baseline income from your subscribers so long as they stay interested in what you have to offer.

There’s no surge followed by slump. Instead, you’re boosting your revenue in a reliable, profitable manner. And so long as you keep providing your subscribers with the valuable content they originally signed up for, you can expect that recurring revenue to keep increasing over time as you collect more subscribers. Read more about churn rates <<HERE>>.

Benefits of Recurring Subscriptions

The benefits of the financial part of recurring subscription services are twofold — for the customer and for you.

• Lower price point: Selling big-ticket items? Sometimes your customers want a taste of what you’ve got to offer before buying into those big purchases. A recurring subscription means that they can build a relationship on trust with your business before making a bigger dedication.
• Fly under the budget radar: You’ll be surprised by how much adoption is possible by avoiding long-winded negotiations with procurement team.
• Operational vs. Capital Expenses: This is a big win especially if your product is price upwards of few hundred dollars.

And the recurring bit is important in terms of your steady revenue stream. Here, you have no gaps between your billing cycle thanks to automatic billing. Cater to the diverse needs of your customers with different subscription plans and different price points as well.

Additionally, consider the cash flow projections as well….  Chargebee says this:

Recurring billing allows SaaS companies to forecast future revenue patterns more accurately based on the number of customers that they have, the services they are using, subscription period, etc. The model also leads to a better distributed cash flow and more accurate stats on usage and payments.

So what’s the best way to get recurring subscriptions?

There are a ton of ways to fill your subscriber lists, and autoresponders are a marketer’s favorite. You can use one-click upsells with PayKickstart to further boost your revenue here. Upgrade folks to more frequent or better subscription services, or use the subscription as a OTO for other product launches — and all to the benefit of both the customer and your company.

Let’s Review: Why Recurring Subscriptions Will Boost Your Revenue

Recurring subscriptions are truly critical if you’re looking to boost your revenue reliably.

1. No contracts = Higher sales: Your subscription model doesn’t necessarily have to lock folks into a contract. By just utilizing an automatic billing method, you’re ensuring that the payments continue to come in — so long as you’re not giving customers a reason to make the effort to discontinue their subscription.
2. Easy Setup and Management: If you have your application ready and have worked on your delivery channel, setting up subscription billing is easier. Then, just use PayKickstart to take care of the payments.
3. Cost: It takes little investment to provide your subscribers with the valuable content they signed up for. It’s an investment in time and effort, and your customers are also happy with the cost they’re investing as well. Smaller, easier payments make it more enticing for subscribers to stick around.

But wait, there’s more!

Okay, let’s overlook the immediate revenue that comes from the subscribers purchasing their actual subscription. Consider that these subscribers might have signed up for the subscription because they’re ‘feeling out’ your company before purchasing a big-ticket item.

That means that you’re making an income from their subscription while they’re ruminating the idea of buying more. Instead of investing more marketing dollars on advertising campaigns, your leads are actually paying you to continue to market to them.

And you can double or even triple your revenue on any given product if you break it into a subscription service rather than pushing it out as a product launch.

Really, you’re taking a product you were already planning to launch, and you break it down into bite-size, subscription-able pieces. If you were to sell that original product for, say, $100…but you break your product down into 30 manageable pieces and sell it as a subscription service for $10/month, you’re making $300 over the course of 30 months. So you’ve effectively TRIPLED your revenue for that single product.

It’s a system that really works in your company’s favor, no matter how you slice it.

We cannot over-emphasize the need to reliably pump out great, valuable content to your subscribers.

If you fail at this part, then you’ll lose the trust (and the financial commitment) from these customers and leads. A successful recurring subscription service relies solely on your ability to continually provide value to your subscribers.

Then, it’s all about the analytics. We wanted a better way to track our subscribers and the revenue it was generating for our business, which is why PayKickstart has integrated useful data streams into our dashboard. See the real money your recurring subscriptions are making for your business.

Setting Up Recurring Subscription Payments with PayKickstart

It’s easy to set up a recurring subscription service with PayKickstart. Whether you’re offering it as your main product or as your OTO, you can offer your customers a recurring subscription service with ease. Here’s how you do it:

Step 1: Open your PayKickstart app.

Step 2: On the left-hand sidebar, click Campaigns.  Then create a new campaign and product in just a couple clicks.

Step 3: Create a new campaign or open an existing campaign that you’d like to make into a recurring subscription.

Step 4: When you save your new campaign after you’ve created it, you’ll be able to edit your payment settings under ‘product details’. Here, you’ll have the option to use a one-time or recurring payment. Select ‘recurring’.

Step 5: Now, you can select your recurring frequency, recurring period, and number of payments. Then, save your changes.

And that’s it! You’re now set up with a recurring subscription service according to the parameters you just set. You can always go back and change these in your Campaigns > Products section of your vendor dashboard.

You tell us: Do you have a recurring subscription? How much of your total revenue does it contribute?

Jared Schneider

Jared Schneider is CEO of PayKickstart and a serial entrepreneur. He is passionate about helping thousands of entrepreneurs and businesses grow through advice, automating payments and providing affiliate tools.

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