Out of all the business models that a company can use to make money, I have a love-hate relationship with only one, subscriptions.

As a business I love the idea of a recurring revenue stream from a dedicated customer base. Not only does it make predicting the financial books easier, but it clearly identifies who you should be focusing your efforts on day to day.

As a customer however, I hate it. Time after time I’ll make one-off transactions over a reoccurring charge on my credit card, even if it means spending more. Something about the commitment and forcing myself to justify a long term perceived value makes me hesitant.

But when you play off of my irrational subscription fears you’ve got a business model powerhouse.

MediaLoot does this very well in my book. It’s a site where you can grab stock design elements for web, mobile and print design work allowing users to create websites that use high quality royalty-free designs (buttons, textures, layouts, etc) with minimal effort.

MediaLoot allows subscribing “members” to download a certain amount per month (varies by plan). So $9 allows you to download 5 different elements a month.

Now for the twist. MediaLoot will also let you pay to download individual items if you’re not a member. At a premium of course.

A rather convenient have your cake and eat it too moment. The per-design charge allows you to try before you buy, commits you to nothing, but makes you think twice if you purchase more than a few items. On the other hand the subscription is aimed at the heavy users and may even become ignored over time as an operating cost.

Now for the genius. MediaLoot from time to time will either have promotions that reduce the subscription cost temporarily or alerts of a subscription increase in the future. Sometimes they’ll even throw in the hook that current members will be grandfathered into the price they already pay for.

So at the end of the day customers have a tough decision to make, pay once or get your foot in the door now and start subscribing.

This is why MediaLoot is doing subscriptions right. 

It’s not a new model, but for online virtual goods like this it fits like a glove. Multiple options like these make it just a little easier to pull out the credit card and commit to a purchase.

This brilliant subscription hybrid is one of my favoriate business models. Adapting the purchase transaction to the fears of the customer like this means at the end of the day I can love this both as a business and as a customer.