Amazon has debuted a marketplace for people to shop for digital subscriptions including for newspapers, magazines, and online fitness classes.
The new site, introduced on Monday, is intended to be a one-stop shop for customers to buy and manage their subscriptions. The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker, online storage company Dropbox, Fitbit’s fitness classes Fitstar, and meditation app Headspace are already available on the site, called “Subscribe with Amazon.”
Amazon is banking that companies will be lured by the chance to reach Amazon’s tens of millions of customers. Amazon’s 54 million Prime customers, who pay $99 annually for access to Amazon’s (“AMZN”) streaming TV shows, movies as well as free, two-day shipping on many items, are particularly coveted because of their big spending.
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Forty percent of Prime members spend over $1,000 annually on Amazon compared to 8% of non-Prime members, according to a Morgan Stanley report. Additionally, Prime members spend nearly five times more on the site than non-Prime members.
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Companies that sell subscriptions through Amazon are able to offer special discounts for Prime members, thereby providing one more incentive for more people to sign up for Prime. For example, magazine subscription reseller Texture is offering Prime members a 50% discount on the first six months of a subscription.
Amazon takes a 30% cut of the sales for each subscription for the first year. After that, Amazon’s cut goes down to 15%.
