Consumers will spend more than $36 Billion dollars on subscription based media by 2014. We’ve discussed in the past how entrepreneurs can capitalize on subscription based consumer media products and the various channels available for processing payments.

The pricing used for subscription based media products is almost as important as their design. Product developers and platform designers must design systems that make recurring payment as effortless as possible. It’s important to the characteristics of your brand and the success of your business to think through and then test things like activation date’s, duration of service, tiered pricing, and tier fluidity, recurrence and dunning.

TLM has found that each platform must have easy to use customer service systems and customer service should be clear and responsive. It should be easy to see adjust billing, renewal, and cancellation options. With certain systems, it’s important that the account management system make it easy to gift friends with subscriptions or to purchase additional services.

Your pricing strategy should not only take into account comparable services, but should focus on how to retain and serve users after they have signed up. Pricing strategy should start with the product design and entrepreneurs should be familiar with the risks and benefits of various billing structures and the ease of use their systems provide to customers.

There are three viable options for billing smart phone and tablet users for subscription based media. Product developers and platform designers should take these into consideration when making new experiences. Creating product roadmaps and understanding the financial implications presented by these three options can make a big change to the early success of your application or subscription based consumer media product.

Apple iOS has 160MM+ users have opened the market. The iPhone and now iPad have a very active community that provides an unmatched lead funnel for new customers and Apple provides an instant platform for content owners. Apple users have been conditioned to download new experiences and the Apple iOS makes charging these customers virtually effortless.

However, Apple take 30% of all revenue. That is 20% higher than google charges for their Android platform and 26% more expensive than traditional online fulfillment services. Entrepreneurs are equally challenged by Apples limiting terms of agreement and the limit on what a developer can do with each customers individual data.

Google recently launched a service called Google One Pass that only takes 10% and works with every platform with the exception of Apple iOS. Google has easier rules in their terms of service and very permissive customer data rules.

The Google system is still relatively new and is not as “plug and play” as the apple experience. They also have an unproved lead funnel for attracting new customers, and some consumers have had difficulty with the Google Checkout experience. However, many analysis have said that the android platform will far surpass the market share of every other platform in early 2011.

For those who would like to keep transaction fees at a minimum various SaaS models can be integrated into their payment systems. These are often more complex and the technology can be difficult to execute but the total cost is between 1-5% per transaction. This option is most viable for experiences that are rooted in a browser and able to extend into mobility devices. Services such as Zuora, Vindicia, Authorize, and PayPal each have service oriented API’s and low exchange costs. They let you own the customer data which can be very valuable to various types of business.

SaaS models are weakened because there is still a limited focus from these providers in the mobile space and they have not been specialized for content publishers. Businesses have faced issues with mobile market walled gardens and the cost-benefit needed is for very high volumes.

The most important thing is to get all the facts together and be sure to build your product roadmap in a way that will let your service grow naturally and evolve over time. Your development strategy should allow you to rapidly test your ideas and then expand into the larger marketplace. TLM also believes that it should let you get to sustaining profits within one year of launch. When you take these things into consideration, in some circumstances, it can make sense to focus on Android first, HTML5, then iOS.