Office Space Expenses

$0

$7,000

Employee & Freelancer Expenses

$151

$352

Website Costs

$223

$7,215

Business Formation Fees

$600

$4,700

Software Expenses

$150

$2,794

Advertising & Marketing Costs

$0

$3,000

Total Startup Costs

$1,124

$25,061

WSJ Subscription

subscription.wsj.com

419

WorthPoint

worthpoint.com

1,768

PressReader

pressreader.com

4,767

Digital River

digitalriver.com

35,892

International Code Council

iccsafe.org

45,159

The West Australian

thewest.com.au

49,433

Dark Horse Comics

darkhorse.com

87,609

Press and Journal

pressandjournal.co.uk

129,822

MiloTreeCart

milotree.com

228,765

Coffee and Contracts

coffeecontracts.com

302,266

Draftss

draftss.com

324,805

Flexibility

You can put as much time into the business as you'd like. If you like the work and have some initial experience, you can start small and manage all aspects of the business on your own.

Rewarding work

Starting a digital subscription business can be really rewarding work. After all, you are solving an immediate issue for your customer and you're working on something you truly care about.

Traffic to your website

A digital subscription business gives people a reason to visit your website and to keep coming back to you!

Meaningful business connections

You never know who you will meet as a digital subscription business. This could be the start of an incredible business opportunity!

High customer retention rates

Once a customer invests in your product, they've invested their time and energy to utilize your product/service which is highly valuable to them. Typically, your product or service becomes indispensable to your customer.

Gain exposure and experience

This career allows you to gain experience working for multiple different businesses - which will benefit your resume and also keep things interesting for you!

Motivation of employees

If you plan to have a sales/content team on board, finding creative ways to motivate them can be a challenge. It's important that you're able to offer great incentives and a good work environment for your employees.

Longer Sales Process

A digital subscription business can be a big time and money investment for your customer, so it's important you plan and predict a longer conversion funnel and stay in communication with potential customers.

Low margins

The gross margins for your digital subscription business are typically around 30%, which can make it more challenging to incur new expenses and maintain profitability.

High employee turnover

In the digital subscription business, employee turnover is often high, which can be quite costly and time consuming for your business. It's important to try and avoid this as much as possible by offering competitive pay, benefits, and a positive work environment.

Taxes

As a digital subscription business, you typically pay self-employment taxes which can be quite high. It's important to understand what you will be paying in taxes each year so you can determine if the work you're taking on is worth it.

High overhead expenses

With starting a digital subscription business, there are overhead expenses that come with selling a physical product. You will want to make sure you strategically budget for these overhead costs. We discuss this more in the startup costs section below.