💸 Half of subscribers never make it to a second payment

Authors often pour all their attention and effort into attracting new subscribers. They run ads, set up collaborations.

And that makes sense — a new subscriber is a result you can see right away. What happens to them a month or six months later isn't so obvious.

We looked at the data across 2.9 million monthly subscriptions on Tribute, and here's the picture:

⭐️ roughly one in two makes it to a second payment
⭐️ one in five reaches 6 months
⭐️ around 9% are still there at 12 months

As you can see, the biggest drop-off happens at the very first renewal.

And here's the surprising part: we broke down the reasons for cancellations, and the two main ones came out almost neck and neck. A deliberate decision by the subscriber — about 35%. And a failed payment — not enough money on the card, an expired card — slightly more, around 40%.

In other words, most of those who left weren't disappointed in the content — their charge simply didn't go through.

Let's do the math for a channel where 100 people signed up at 400 ₽ each (that's the median subscription price in rubles):

⭐️ first month — 40,000 ₽
⭐️ second — around 21,000 ₽ left
⭐️ after six months — about 7,000 ₽ a month

A retained subscriber isn't a one-off 400 ₽. It's 400 ₽ every month for as long as they stay with you. And keeping a subscriber is far easier than winning a new one.

Tribute handles technical churn on its own: if a payment fails, the service doesn't drop the subscriber right away — it retries the charge. Some of those payments eventually go through, and the subscriber stays without ever noticing the hiccup.

A deliberate departure, though, is your territory. One tool for it is a cancellation discount: a one-time offer for anyone who taps "cancel." It's often cheaper to keep someone at half price than to lose them entirely.

Bottom line: attracting new subscribers matters, but keeping the ones already with you matters more.

You can set up a cancellation discount right inside the Tribute bot — take a look in your subscription settings 👇