Subscription business model
Overview
 
The subscription business model is a business model
Business model
A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value...

 where a customer must pay a subscription price to have access to the product/service. The model was pioneered by magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

s and newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

s, but is now used by many businesses and websites.

The first UK subscription newsletter was the London Property Letter
London Property Letter
The London Property Letter published by Sylvester Stein was one of the first newsletters in the UK. It was a mail-order magazine sold on subscription to anyone looking to invest in property in the London area. It highlighted up-and-coming areas and advised on purchase and rental...

launched in the early 1960s by Sylvester Stein, previously editor of South Africa's Drum magazine. The London Property Letter utilized the standing order
Standing order (banking)
A Standing Order is an instruction a bank account holder gives to their bank to pay a set amount at regular intervals to another account. The instruction is sometimes known as a banker's order....

 payment where the subscriber signed up for a continuous annual payment from his or her bank account.
 
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