Flickr — remember Flickr? — charges $6.95 a month to share your photos to the world, if you want pro functionality. Buffer, the social media sharing and analytics company, charges $10/month for anything beyond the freemium crumbs. And Dropbox goes from $10-50/month, just at the consumer level.

But subscription revenue has been around a lot longer than even the oldest dot-com. Aria Systems, a software-as-a-service billings platform, put together an infographic with all the subscriptions that the average American — you know, the person who lives next door and just got an Android phone — pays every month.

It’s a massive $857/month … mostly because of items that we don’t typically think of as subscription payments, but actually are. Things like insurance, a mobile phone plan, and utilities. Even the biggest one of all: health care.

Over time, startups can only hope that some of this revenue, most of which is dumped into the laps of massive contenders in yesterday’s economy, will come their way.

Here’s the visual data:

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Zuora basically handles everything that happens behind the scenes when a user signs up for a recurring subscription on a site like GigaOm Pro. The company provides businesses with software to create and micromanage any recurring revenue model, and make tweaks whenever they want. Zuora also includes an analytics suite in its software to help business determine which payment models are working and which ones aren’t.

Subscription models have become increasingly attractive for content providers like Netflix and Hulu, which announced a premium service earlier this year called Hulu Plus, which runs on a monthly subscription. The whole recurring subscription market is worth around $7.1 billion yearly — of which Zuora says it has already captured $1 billion.

The announcement came on the heels of another major billing service provider’s funding news: Vindicia, which raised $20 million earlier this month, focuses on providing software to manage billing and fraud protection. But one difference is that Zuora allows for a greater degree of micromanagement than just automating the management of payment models.

“People have a tendency to say, ‘are you guys just a back-end function?’” said Tzuo. “That’s not exactly right, though it’s close — we want to provide people with a way to innovate their payment models and not just manage them.”

Zuora plans to use the funding to hire another 100 employees or so as it expands internationally. The company currently has around 110 employees. It announced it became cash flow positive in the first quarter of the year — so it’s not like Zuora actually needed the funds to manage operating costs, Tzuo said.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based company has raised $41.5 million to date from investors Shasta Ventures and Tenaya Capital. Redpoint Ventures led the most recent round of funding, and Redpoint Ventures’ Tim Haley will join Zuora’s board as part of the funding agreement. Zuora’s clients include business collaboration software provider Box.net and online news publication GigaOm. It has also partnered with PayPal to use it as a billing provider for subscriptions.

[Photo: Martz Agency]