I have a question. How are people able to sell magazine subscriptions on Ebay much cheaper than what the magazine’s publisher charges for the same subscription?
I’ve been renewing all of my fly fishing and fly tying magazine subscriptions on Ebay for the past several years now, at considerably less cost. For example, I just paid a bit over $7.00 for a 2 year subscription to a well known fly fishing magazine that would have normally cost $44.00. For other similar magazines, you can often get 2 or 3 year subscriptions on Ebay for under $20.00.
What’s the financial or contractural arrangement between these people who sell magazines on Ebay and the magazine publisher? Anyone know?
I’m speculating that the publisher must be giving practically all of the revenue from the subscription sale to these so-called “agents” (perhaps less some small % to cover incidental expense expenses such as postage for mailing the magazine, and the printing cost maybe). Then, the publisher’s revenues and profits come from advertising – the more magagines they sell, the more they can charge for ads.
For years, it has bugged the heck out of me to get renewal notices months in advance of when the subscription expires. There must be an awfully big profit margin for them to incur the cost to send out so many renewal notices. Now, I simply throw them in the garbage and renew via Ebay at my leisure. I might add that I’ve been subscribing to these magazines continually for 10 to 37 years.
I would think that it might be a good idea for magazine publishers to simply email their subscribers directly with the types of renewal offers that people are selling their magazines for on Ebay.
John