Over 500 Subscribers with a Super Simple Subscription Model | EP 141

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Have you gotten stuck trying to decide what to include in your subscription box? You want to give your subscribers everything they could possibly want - but you know it’s not possible to do that and stay profitable. It is so easy for new subscription box owners to overthink everything and end up overwhelmed. One subscription box owner decided to keep things simple - really simple - and now has more than 500 monthly subscribers! 

Meet Launch Your Box member Emily Vincent of The Polka Dot Poodle. Emily is creative and fun and loves to give gifts. She doesn’t just “give” gifts, though - she presents them in a way that makes them seem personal and extra special. Emily is passionate about gift-giving and adding the special touches that take a gift and turn it into an experience for the recipient. 

When Emily first started her business, she was creating all the things. She and I share a love for monograms and she was creating and monogramming products for her many customers. But she quickly found that creating the same item over and over again didn’t bring her joy. When she examined what she loved about her business, she realized what she really loved was designing gift tags for people to give the items she made as gifts. 

So Emily decided to focus on just that. Gift tags. She started a digital subscription where subscribers receive a digital file with that month’s designs and print them themselves. How easy is that?! No printing, no packing, no shipping. Emily’s workload is the same whether she has 10 subscribers or hundreds. 

Emily soon realized that some of her subscribers wanted to receive the gift tags already printed and ready to go. They wanted her to make things even easier and more convenient for them. She was happy to oblige and started another version of her subscription. For these subscribers, Emilly prints the physical gift tags and ships them - just the tags - to her subscribers. Still simple and easy to fulfill. 

Because Emily likes to serve her audience, she recently added another subscription. This one is more custom, more personalized, and more labor-intensive. And yes, it involves monograms. But Emily loves it and so do her subscribers. And she is careful not to take on more subscribers than she can comfortably handle. 

When Emily started her first subscription, she had 37 subscribers. That number has grown to more than 500 subscribers. 500 people who receive gift tags designed by Emily every month. 

Gift tags. How simple is that? 

Emily’s advice to anyone thinking about starting a subscription box? Just start. Develop your idea, create a landing page, grow your email list and social media followers, and just start. She promises it will be worth it. 

Join me for this episode and learn how Emily found subscription box success by focusing on what she loves to do and keeping things simple.

Find and follow Emily: 

• The Polka Dot Poodle on Instagram
• The Polka Dot Poodle on Facebook 
• The Polka Dot Poodle Website