Many of you would be surprised to know that in the present market scenario subscription websites are seeing a return. This is, in a market, which is still reeling from the blows inflicted to it, by the stock market and economic slide along with the dot-com collapse.

More and more people are turning towards these subscription websites. Some are opening new ones while others are looking to revamp the old ones. All aimed at attracting the client, who is now sophisticated and quality conscious.

This fact has also been attested by a research done by, Jupiter Media Metrix, a research firm. According to them, as compared to last year, people this year are spending more time on the web. For example, in U.S. on an average, people are spending as much as 2 hours more. However, this does not mean that they are visiting more number of sites, in fact they are only visiting a few selected sites.

This trend has also been noticed by, a New York Times writer Amy Harmon. "Often, Internet users generally stick to half a dozen sites for news, sports scores, airline tickets and other things they need regularly."

Most of this online traffic is being generated on subscription websites. You can gauge this from the fact that many a subscription websites are continuing to profit in such troubled times, as well. However, there are also some big ones like Salon and Feed, which have closed shop. Nonetheless, you need to make attempts to reap the benefits of this trend towards subscription websites. Here are a few pointers to hep you:

1. Get Popular - Firstly, try to make your website popular among the people. For this, you can circulate a free article or report on a topic, which is similar to your website content. Take care that your report is unbiased and does not look like a promotional piece. Give an unbiased view and include your website as a relevant link to the topic. You can also include other links to make it more genuine. This report could be in any format be it text, PDF or html etc. Make sure that your report can be distributed, freely. Also, take care to include a catchy phrase in it, which allows you to easily, trace it. Try to limit the page count to 4 pages. Otherwise, many people may not get around to reading it, completely.

2. Include Freebies - It would be a good idea to include some freebies on your site, which people can't ignore. These freebies could be anything such as a free newsletter, tutorial, article, gift, feature, consultation, advice, training, resources etc. Once people get used to these freebies you can cleverly ask them to become subscribers at various stages. Everyone can adapt this to suit the needs of your subscription website.

3. Give Free Access - Before you make people subscribe to your site, it is very important to make them realise what they will miss if they do not subscribe to your site. To do this, you can allow people to have restricted access to your site and content. Initially give them access, at free of cost, as an appetiser and later turn them into subscribers. This way, people will have an idea about the usefulness of your content. Don't forget with more and more websites going out of business, people are on a constant lookout for new resources for their requirements.