Entrepreneurs: Angie’s List and Subscriptions
by Miki SaxonHistory is interesting, the more ancient the better, but ‘ancient’ means different things by context.
Ancient Internet history dates more to the 1990s and one interesting historical nugget is that the general attitude that everything on the Internet should be free was nonexistent.
Enter Angie’s List, which has always been a subscription service.
Because this was 1995, nobody was yet shouting from the rooftops that information wanted to be free. “Some of the choices we made early on were dictated by the world we lived in,” Ms. Hicks said. “People paid for content.”
Angie’s List went public in November, 2011 at $13, jumped 25% and trades close to that number today.
Angie’s List has over a million subscribers and around three quarters of them renewed in 2011, up from 62 percent in 2008.
The business is built entirely around user-generated content, but differs in a very significant way from other rating sites, think Yelp.
Angie’s List allows no anonymous reviews and the staff goes to great lengths to keep the content authentic.
If you are developing an Internet company counting on advertising revenue is the norm, but the idea of targeted ads is facing a major backlash. The only way to target is to track.
73% say they would…
NOT BE OKAY with a search engine keeping track of your searches and using that information to personalize your future search results because you feel it is an invasion of privacy
The subscription model is making a comeback and it is one you should consider—assuming you are offering something of real value.
Image credit: Angie’s List
August 9th, 2012 at 1:18 am
[…] March we looked at Angie’s List, also a subscription […]
February 28th, 2014 at 1:15 am
[…] Perhaps the reason so many Internet businesses are dependent on ads for all or most of their revenue is because it requires real value to charge for your product. […]