My company has seen subscription-based products suffer for the past 16 months or so. When renewal times come around, a lot more people are passing than in the past. And with those that do want to renew, a lot more cards are bouncing, which I think it pretty telling. NEW subscriptions are also way down compared to the past.

Meanwhile, one-time order infoproducts have actually picked up, which I think shows that people are willing to pay for a solution to their problems, but much less likely to enter into a longer term financial commitment. I haven’t seen a real noticeable change in refund requests.

I think this is a good lesson. A lot of info-product marketing “gurus” go out of their way to tell clients that subscriptions are the key to long-term, recession-proof cash flow. At least for my business, I’m EXTREMELY glad that we don’t rely solely on subscription-based products.