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ArtToday.com

ArtToday.com, Inc. has been in the graphic-content publishing business since 1988. Originally a software company, ArtToday shifted its focus to the Internet in 1996, offering online subscriptions for clipart, web graphics, photos, and fonts. Since then, the company has developed a network of design-oriented websites that provide graphics users with royalty-free content at affordable prices.

The company maintains a network of graphics related websites including Photos.com (http://www.photos.com/), ClipArt.com (http://www.clipart.com/), Graphics.com (http://www.graphics.com/), FlashComponents.com (http://www.flashcomponents.com/), RebelArtist.com (http://www.rebelartist.com/) and more. ClipArt.com is the largest subscription-based graphics resource on the web with over 2,500,000 clipart images, animations, photos, fonts, and sounds.

ArtToday.com has established a tradition of providing the professional and home user with innovative technology and easy to use, high quality software products at affordable prices.

This is yet another example of a site that is largely used by professionals, though amateurs use it as well. If a graphic element or an illustration is available at a nominal cost, why re-invent the wheel?

There are dozens of success stories and sure and certain, there would be dozens of failures. The web is a battlefield with victors and the vanquished. Where you want to be depends on what you can learn from these models and success stories.

Develop your business model

In the previous sections we saw the advantages of having a subscription website business model. We also discussed factors for selecting a business idea. In this section we would discuss some of the issues pertaining to developing your business model. This is mainly focused on the revenue streams and how you can set rates.

Subscription rates and pricing models

The very first aspect of developing your business model is to devise your pricing model and subscription rates. The best way to do this is to study your competitor sites and their pricing models. You should also make a comparison of the kind of services offered by your competitors. Subscriptions can be monthly, quarterly, annually, or even one-time. A report on online paid content conducted by Online Publishers Association (OPA) in 2002 concluded that although, one-time subscriptions grew a bit faster, all types of subscriptions still made considerable gains.

One time subscriptions priced at $50 or more had a year-over-year growth rate of 125 percent, while subscriptions priced in the range of $5-$49.

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