Yes, AmericanGreetings.com had a very happy Valentines Day, thank you. On one of the Web's hottest holidays, the egreetings publisher received over 70,000 love notes all in its favorite color, subscription-dollar green. But this was just another day in the life of a site that shocked the Web industry in early 2002 by announcing it had attracted over 1 million paid subscribers in the three months since it started charging for electronic greeting cards. After all the noggin scratching over "what users will pay for," who knew they would ante up for ecards? Go figure. In fact, AmericanGreetings.com's (AG) success is the sum total of careful business calculations, plus a century of card-making expertise, plus a seven-year journey through various Web content business models. Online via AOL since 1995 and then from the Web as well in 1996, the company started with the same fee-based model as its offline parent, American Greetings.
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