As Paper Coupons Recede, More Coupon Insert Sellers Retire

If there was any doubt that printed newspapers are no longer a sustainable method of delivering coupons to your door, just look to the Peach State. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced last week that it would end its printed edition and go all-digital at the end of the year, leaving the Georgia capital as the largest metro area in the country without a printed daily newspaper.

Those who will no longer get a Sunday paper or the coupon inserts it contains may decide to buy their coupons online instead, boosting business for sellers who engage in the once-lucrative, always-controversial practice that insert publishers have long sought to stop.

But these days, those efforts to thwart coupon sales might not be as necessary as they once were – because many sellers are giving up on their own.

The increasing move toward digital discounts, and the decline in traditional paper coupon inserts, have put many insert sellers out of business in recent months. So industry opponents of coupon sales just may have won their battle by default.

The site My-Coupon-Inserts appears to be the latest to have called it quits, as its last listing is from June. The site owner did not respond to a request for comment. Earlier this year, The Coupon Marketplace clipping service closed “after 13 years of deals,” redirecting users to its companion site Sunday Coupon Inserts, which sells whole inserts instead. And the site I Clip, You Save began winding down last year after the owner complained there was no use selling inserts that were “100% meds” with no food offers.

That might suggest a lack of demand from shoppers looking for savings on more than just household items and over-the-counter products. A longtime contributor to the online forum Slickdeals confirmed a lack of interest in the coupons being offered in inserts these days, when she quit her longtime practice of posting coupon previews a few months ago. “Looks like the regular OTC meds,” she wrote. “If anyone would like to take over posting the previews, please do. I actually used to look forward to posting them but there is not much interesting for me anymore.”

No one responded.

The last wave of coupon sellers closing up shop came during the early days of the Covid pandemic, when shoppers were more concerned with finding necessities than clipping coupons. Several sites shut down at that time, including The Coupon Clippers.

“I could not maintain a service where people could not purchase the products,” site owner Rachael Woodard told Coupons in the News. “We were already hurting, but Covid was the blow that just shut us right down.” Paper coupons were already beginning to fade in popularity at the time. “As print media dies down, the whole paper coupon industry may just disappear,” Woodard predicted back in 2020.

Today, she’s found a completely new passion, running a fabric and quilting business called Quilted Twins, and she isn’t looking back. “I used to be a very, very avid couponer,” she said. “However, I’ve found now that it’s very difficult.” With fewer coupons available and shorter expiration dates, “it is not really fun anymore.”

The coupon industry has never found it particularly fun, explaining why it frowns upon the existence of a thriving online coupon marketplace. Selling coupons in bulk can put too many coupons into the hands of too few, critics argue, allowing them to clear shelves while paying little or nothing for their purchases and denying others the chance to buy anything. But there’s nothing illegal about it.

Where it does become illegal, is when the temptation to acquire more and more coupons to sell, often led to outright theft on the part of many coupon sellers. While some sellers claimed they legitimately purchased piles of Sunday newspapers in order to sell the inserts inside, others were caught and convicted for stealing pallets of inserts from newspaper distribution facilities.

Coupon selling hasn’t gone away altogether. Several websites offering coupons are still up and running, and many other sellers operate exclusively on social media. But with only one printed coupon insert remaining, publishing sporadically, supply and demand alike are drying up.

It’s hard to sell coupons when there are fewer coupons to sell, and fewer customers to buy them. With two major insert publishers deciding to exit the business in recent years, and more newspapers going digital, the coupon industry may have won the battle against coupon insert sales – in a way few may have seen coming.