You can make recurring billing work for you, but you will need to be creative. Most importantly, you will need to come up with a subscription program for your business that you think your customers would like to sign up for, and build from there. A couple of great examples are Dollar Shave Club and Manpacks, both eCommerce businesses. Dollar Shave Club is an eCommerce company that delivers razors and other personal grooming products straight to consumers by mail. With their “Razor Plan” in particular, customers select a shaver they like from the Dollar Shave Club’s website, they choose how many blade cartridges they need per month, and then the Dollar Shave Club mails them the cartridges monthly. These customers are billed recurrently so their blade cartridges will arrive regularly. In the other example, Manpacks is a men’s essentials subscription service that offers underwear, socks, toiletries, and other basic needs. Buyers first create a “pack” of the essentials that they need through the Manpacks website. The this pack is mailed to them every three months. Customers are billed recurrently every quarter.
Of course, recurring payments work for both physical and digital products, so you don’t need to worry if you can adapt this billing method for your own online business. You just need to do a few things.
- Make sure that you have an awesome idea in place.
- Entice your customers to subscribe to your website, making sign-ups easy for them.
- Ensure that you provide a satisfying experience so your customers will keep on using your service or buying your products—and you can keep on billing them for this.
