Subscriptions As a way to make money online...

[midnightvamp 1]

Have any of you tried the whole subscriptions thing? Do people actually pay for subscriptions? I'm thinking about it, but I'm not sure that people will order a subscription so readily, especially on a site that is just getting started.Do you find that people who do subscribe, keep subscribing? Like recurring payments? What would you say is the average amount that people are willing to pay for? If I were to sell things such as website content, like images or stories or whatever, do you think people would be paying enough money per month to make it worth my while?I plan on adding new content regularly, so that people will want to resubscribe, so that they get it. Otherwise, they could grab the entire contents of my site in one month, and cancel the subscription.Does this even sound like a good idea? I was trying to figure out a way that I could implement a free shopping cart, that would automatically send out the products sold to the buyers, but after looking into it quite deeply, I just found more problems and few answers.$10/month is like nothing to pay for a subscription to a site that has a lot of content for you to use, but I feel that if I go and charge more, people won't bother. But if you think about it, people are paying far more than $10 per article written, so I think I would loose out in that manner if I was using subscription based.It would be neat, if I could do something that was like a subscription for $10, that allowed one download, while a subscription for $50 allowed 5 downloads and so on. That way, if people feel they are going to get more out of the system, they can pay for what they want, and I shouldn't end up loosing lots of money to the people who go download crazy, just because the content is available.If you really think about it too, $50 isn't that much to pay for unlimited articles, let's say for an example. But, to me, it seems high, like I wouldn't pay it myself. But then again, I've sold single articles for more than that, so I'm not really sure. And if I'm selling single articles for more than that, and someone can get an unlimited monthly subscription for $50 it still seems like I'm not making as much as I should be.I don't know... it seems like an endless battle to try to get a site together to do what I want, and I've never really gotten a 'e-commerce' type thing going, so I'm all confused by it, and slightly overwhelmed if I might say so. I don't have the coding know-how to pull off a huge e-commerce site that does the things I want it to, nor the money to pay for someone that does.Do you have any ideas as to what I can do to sell electronic products, so that people can receive them right after payment, either by way of subscription, or by way of cart - because I'm open to both. Any other ideas would be more than welcome too, because once again, I seem to be stuck.I suppose if it was easy to make money online, everyone and their brother would be rich by now. I suppose it's those who keep at it that eventually feel the rewards.