The ultimate subscription model: A job well done
August 21st, 2008 by 
Chris Harris
I’m currently working on another startup with some good friends and we’ve been debating whether or not we should offer our services in a transactional or subscription business model. The subscription business model advocates point to their hockey stick charts and wonder how anyone could argue with them. The transactional argument is more instinctual - it’s one that starts with the user experience and basically asserts, “You can’t be doing the wrong thing by doing a better job for your customer.”
It’s a tough call.
Don Reisinger wrote a very interesting piece, Google’s search secret: It gets rid of you, that struck a real chord with me. In discussing a recent report on how Google is stealing market even more share in the search market from Yahoo and Microsoft they note that Google is the only site which really encourages you to leave! By doing so, they seem to indirectly be encouraging you to come back.
“But Google, unlike Yahoo and Microsoft, has made it a key point in its business model to ensure that you get off the Google search result pages as soon as possible. Its competitors, on the other hand, fail to fully understand that premise.”
There is so much discussion, on the web especially, about subscription business models its refreshing to hear that Google’s capitalizing on the ultimate subscription lock-in: doing a good job for their users!
Posted in Entrepreneurial, Innovation, Start-up | 
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