Is The NYT Paywall Just A Ploy To Sell More Print Subscriptions?
from the or-are-they-just-crazy dept
There are so many strange and problematic aspects of the New York Times' ersatz paywall plan that sometimes the big and obvious one doesn't get discussed enough: it's really really expensive. A year of full access on all devices comes out to $455 (or $421 if you count their paltry four-week introductory discount). That's more than the Wall Street Journal - way more. In fact it's more than a lot of things, as this chart by Michael DeGusta illustrates nicely:
But it gets even crazier when you compare that price tag to a New York Times print subscription. A year of weekday home delivery only costs $285 the first year, and $322 after that (with some variation by location). That's right: over $100 cheaper than a digital subscription - and a print subscription includes full digital access. Perhaps one of the economists who writes for the New York Times can correct me on this, but that doesn't make any goddamn sense. If you're going to charge $455 a year for a website, you better not tell me I can get the same thing plus a few hundred pounds of free kindling for two-thirds that. If I pay you $150, will you also mow my lawn?
I can think of only two explanations for this. One is that I am severely misinformed about the nature of the internet, and websites are in fact delivered to my computer by truck while system administrators dump barrels of ink in the sewer. The other is that, in the long run, the paywall is just a giant ploy to get their print subscriber numbers up. Some believe that the print prices are purposely obfuscated, but I think this is a temporary situation. I predict two things will happen before the year is out: readers who hit the paywall will start being greeted with home delivery offers alongside the digital packages, and digital subscribers will begin to receive offers to "add on" a print subscription at no "extra" charge.
If I'm right about the New York Times' motives, I'll be pretty disappointed. Their strategy is so confusing that everyone is having a hard time figuring out exactly what they hope to accomplish, but at least it seemed to be an acknowledgement that the economics of news distribution have changed (even if they reacted in an entirely backwards fashion). Now it is beginning to seem like nothing more than an attempt to prop up the same legacy model that has been holding them back this entire time.
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Filed Under: business models, paywall, print
Companies: ny times
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Hmmm
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Apparently...
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Re: Apparently...
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A thought....
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Re: A thought....
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As far as the effectiveness of print/online ads, I think you are probably right when it comes to pure display advertising: a quarter-page ad in a newspaper is more effective than a leaderboard on a website. But digital presents all sorts of opportunities for more engaging and targeted advertising strategies, rather than the "cast a wide net, with some vague demographic adjustment" approach that rules print.
Google has demonstrated that innovative advertising which takes advantage of the strengths of digital can be a massive cash cow. Newspapers just need to figure out how that can work for them, because I'm entirely confident that it will. Where there are eyeballs, there is opportunity for profit - it just might take some creative thinking, and the guts move beyond the privileged stranglehold on distribution that newspapers have enjoyed for so long.
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There is an opportunity in advertising related to the concept of Vendor Relationship Management (VRM)
What if you subscribed to an advertising company that had a focus on consumer privacy and relevance through the consumer revealing their purchasing habits and preferences, but with the understanding that the merchants didn't have access to more info about the consumer than that in which they opt (e.g. FB security settings). The free product through which the valuable consumer data is gotten is the free receipt scanner with OCR (Could the Evernote platform be used for this?).
[Sorry for the ramble, it was longer :-]
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Interesting idea on the privacy-based advertising: it's always bugged me how people have a kneejerk reaction to sharing any data about their habits, even though sharing that data could actually make their lives better by putting them in touch with products and services they might actually need while cutting back on the amount of totally irrelevant advertising they are bombarded with.
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In talking about the wierd pricing (extra for phones and tablets) to my father he mentioned that it just sounded like a way to maximise profit by offering different levels of product. I think thats how the NYT views it as well. The website is the "Online NYT", the smartphone app is the "Mobile NYT", for the go-getters on the move!
What they refuse to realize is that they only have one product....information. And that now a "computer" doesn't need to be a large black box sitting on a desk.
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FYI
Email is delivered by truck.
The internet is delivered by a series of tubes.
(I thought everyone knew that)
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Re: FYI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes
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That's almost certainly what it is, particularly since they're likely figuring that online viewer numbers will drop with the meter. They can charge higher prices for advertisements in print, so they're trying to inflate their print numbers even if most of the new print subscribers throw the paper into the recycling bin upon delivery.
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You are going to get a lot of people that buy the paper version because they want the paper version - and they will accidentally become digital subscribers (many who will not use it).
You are going to get a lot of people that didn't read all of this confusing stuff about the pricing and subscribe to the digital subscription because they are digital people and want it (and will probably pay again in ink and paper because lots of these twits will probably print the articles they want to read).
Then you will find the small number of people that want just the digital version, were not dissuaded by the cost, saw the cost of the paper version, saw that the paper version came with a digital subscription, and went "hmmm...since I already have a trash bin, that's the way to go". I don't think this will be a very big group. Who price shops their newspaper? If you are frugal enough to, and you want digital news, you probably get your news for free already.
This all stinks of a series of bad corporate decisions by people that do not understand technology - and have a very poor grasp on economics.
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Exactly
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and...
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I know it doesn't line up with what you like, but perhaps they have long since CwF, and thus there is always a reason to buy, even if it is attached to an older, more developed brand.
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What's in doubt is the stupid way they're packaging their offerings
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NYT's Paywall is their choice
I find it funny that you harp on NYT all the time, and all they are doing is making their own business choices. Right or Wrong it's their choices and their mistakes to make. I've never seen where your annimosity comes from towards them.
I especially love how you reference the $40 million it cost to create it, and seem to believe that the entire $40 million was spent on the java scripts for blocking access.
Most likely the $40 million was for a full system which included all the backend work for the reporters to publish/update to the wall, all the stuff to manage any advertising, all the user access and billing modules, maybe the hardware for hosting and so on and on and on. $40 million sounds about on par for what a big company like NYT would spend.
Sure the actual coding probably cost far below $500k in India somewhere, but the entire project, all the labor, all the meetings, all the research, all the design etc woudl total out somewhere near there.
One of my competitors claims to have spent $1.5 million developing a software product to compete against mine. I initially laughed at the number because I run my entire company on far below that number. I was talking to a CPA friend of mine and joked about it, and he took the time to actually show how my own product's real world development cost would probably be close to if not much higher than that $1.5 million had I not provided all the labor myself without paying myself.
It's easy for people to quickly dismiss software as being cheap or free to sell, and when it is strictly a hobby it's true, it is cheap/free to work with. BUT you cannot build a business, and expect that your time is free.
I have more than 10k hours invested in programming in my products, with about 3k of those hours being invested before I even started my business. Most of my friends look at the prices I charge for a new customer installation, and freak at a $20-50k installation cost because "it's just software" and "you already owned it" and "it only costs a few pennies to burn a CD" and so on and on.
I turn around and simply ask if they would do their jobs if they didn't get a paycheck? When they say "of course not" then I ask then why should I work for free? The time I invested into starting the company is just as valuable to me as my time now. I invested the time with the expectation that I would be paid for it in the future.
I have a potential maximum customer base of around 3800 customers nationwide, I must consider the fact that I will NEVER have 100% of the market so I have to somehow spread the cost over what I expect to receive in market share. Then I have to figure in the cost of time and efforts and investments to keep doing a good job and to maintain those customers and so on.
Software distribution is cheap, but software creation is no where near cheap. If you disregard the cost of development when you look at sales and distribution you will NEVER have a business model that lasts long term. Development is only free as long as your company is small enough that only you are developing. Once you hire someone to do development your costs before going to market far exceed the costs of distribution, sales and even long term maintenance.
For you to claim you have multiple financial and echonimic related degrees, these should have been the first things you were taught.
You have asked me in the past why I insist on calling you "little mikee," and the facts are you disrespect myself and every legitimate business owner and serious content creator by your insistance that our costs to get a product to market is irrelivant. You disrespect all of us by claiming that we should find "alternative business models" to make money because the digital age makes our costs negligible. You disrespect all of us by trying to force your entitlement ways on us and force us to give our work away for free.
I am in the software business, Hawking t-shirts and coffee mugs and stationary and posters will NEVER sustain the costs of my primary business of software development. I do work in the SAAS world, so I DO live and die by the quality of both my software, and my support after the sale. BUT I do NOT need to give my software away, or allow ever pirate out there take it and do whatever they want with it.
My edge in the market is a combination of the Quality of my SOFTWARE and my Service. My customers do make their decissions based on price and service, but in most cases in todays echonomy price the higher priority. If I allowed anyone to copy my product and build a business model around my product I would be out of business in months, no matter how good my service was.
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Re: NYT's Paywall is their choice
1) I'm not Mike - might want to check that before launching into a page-long tirade
2) The business decisions absolutely are theirs to make. And they are ours to criticize when they don't make sense. I love newspapers - I work at a newspaper - I want to see them succeed. I think this move will hurt the new york times more than it helps it, so I point that out in the hopes of spurring more discussion and playing my own (extremely tiny) role in shaping the future of the industry.
3) Yeah, sometimes I'm hard on them, and I crack jokes, or question their sanity. That's because they are a company in the public eye that has developed a very weird plan that is confusing a lot of people. I'm sure the NYT is strong enough to withstand a couple of critical jokes.
4) Nobody actually believes the $40-million was spent entirely on JavaScript - that's another joke (we like those here on Earth). Nonetheless, it seems like a lot of money to spend on something that is unlikely to bring in anywhere near that much revenue. If you believe the paywall is worth $40-million in development, fine - but from a pure business perspective, it's pretty hard to see how it is possibly worth that much.
5) Nobody tries to force anything on anyone. Techdirt tries to help businesses make more money by explaining what they think is an effective strategy and explaining why that strategy makes sense. If you feel disrespected, it's probably because you are obsolete.
6) If you still can't get beyond the "t-shirts and coffee mugs" mentality then you have really failed to grasp the entire concept of selling scarcity. Nobody said kitschy merchandise is the only option (though in certain industries it happens to be a highly effective option). In fact the CORE POINT of "CwF+RtB" is to not just copy what has worked for someone else, and figure out what works for you and your customers.
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Re: Re: NYT's Paywall is their choice
Marcus is right, Michial. You created a straw man and couldnt even blow id down.
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Re: Re: NYT's Paywall is their choice
There is the Techdirt attitude we know and love. "No, sweetheart, I hit you because I love you and I want to help you to be a better person!"
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having reporters in libya is a scarce commodity
So tell us. What should they be selling if it's not t-shirts and coffee mugs? What is the scarce commodity? Personally I'm happy to pay for the news because that's what I want. But you want them to give that away for free and sell soemthing else. What is that something else?
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Re: having reporters in libya is a scarce commodity
You are aware that newsstand and subscription prices do not, and have never, covered the cost of producing and delivering the news, right? Advertising is and always has been the lifeblood of the industry. Eyeballs are the product, advertisers are the client.
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Re: Re: having reporters in libya is a scarce commodity
But you're right that it is part of the equation. The only problem is that it's just not working. The advertisers want eyeballs and they won't pay enough of a premium to be next to expensive content in the NY Times. It's just as easy to buy an ad at BoingBoing who will push the edge of fair use and deliver the same eyeballs. And BoingBOing isn't even the real competition. User generated content like Facebook is even cheaper to generate and so the advertisers will flock there.
If we're going to have professional content, we're going to need to pay for it and it's increasingly clear that advertising will only pay for the cheapest content of interest to the widest possible audience. Think TMZ not sending reporters to Libya.
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Re: Re: Re: having reporters in libya is a scarce commodity
If we're going to have professional content, we're going to need to pay
Funny, because I pick up a free print newspaper every morning. I guess that's impossible. Maybe I've been dreaming.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: having reporters in libya is a scarce commodity
Selling a premium product at a premium price is a valid business model that works in almost every business. The tricky part is figuring out how much more people are willing to pay for how much perceived quality.
And finally, if you're going to quote me at least quote the entire sentence. I explicitly included the possibility that free sources like TMZ or your daily rag will continue to exist. But the proportion of ads to content will be maddeningly high.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: having reporters in libya is a scarce commodity
The NYT could do the exact same thing...IF they had the content that people desired. What has been said repeatedly on this site, and all over other places, is that the NYT is basically a generic rehashing of the same information.
The issue at hand is simple: for the vast majority of NYT readers, the value of the content is not worth paying for. You need the premium content BEFORE you make an about-face with your revenue scheme.
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Re: NYT's Paywall is their choice
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Re: NYT's Paywall is their choice
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That said, I hope they go back to free access soon!
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I also call it a ploy because there is some inherent dishonesty. Emblazoned on their access page is "ALL DIGITAL ACCESS - BEST VALUE" when in fact it's not the best value at all, it's a significantly worse deal than becoming a print subscriber.
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That said, I hope they go back to free access soon!
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I tend to wonder if the NYT even knows what it's trying to accomplish.
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The longer they incentivize consumers to purchase print news when they really only want the digital access, the more likely this "strategy" will fail.
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Realistic Pricing
While I think certain elements of the decision are odd or even arbitrary--why differentiate tablet and cell phone readership at different tiers--I'm also curious to see if it will work, and part of me sincerely hopes it does. Good, in-depth investigative journalism requires significant resources, and I would hate to see that go away. There are very few papers left with the resources and structure to support that kind of reporting. I'd like to see them stick around and keep doing such reporting.
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Re: Realistic Pricing
The middle tier comes out to about the same as a print subscription. Only the lowest tier is cheaper. And frankly, the fact that these prices are even in the same ballpark is ridiculous. Newspapers are printed on giant rolls of paper with gallons of ink, using building-sized industrial equipment operated by multiple trained technicians, then loaded into trucks and driven all over the country. Pricing a website at the same level is, frankly, insulting to the consumer.
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Ummmm, no, it's not. It's actually pretty funny that you would attempt to claim that.
And while industrial presses aren't cheap, neither are programmers.
The cost of the necessary infrastructure to deliver news digitally is only a tiny fraction of the cost to deliver it physically. Are you really trying to deny that?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Realistic Pricing
You realize that a bunch of those salaries go to the pre-press, distribution and subscription sales departments, right? It's not all editorial. A big chunk of that half-billion number is directly tied to print.
In reality, their newsroom/editorial costs are only about $200-million, while printing and distribution is somewhere between $600-million and $1-billion. Actually to be fair those numbers are from early 2009, but the ratios hold true.
Where are you getting your numbers?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Realistic Pricing
Also, it's not just the news and editorial that are part of the digital bill. The web site takes programmers and system administrators and hardware and electricity. Ad sales are also a cost for both.
Regardless of the exact percentages, the problem is that ads just aren't paying the freight online. They may get 30-40m visitors to the web site, but the advertisers will not pay enough to generate the content. And the Kindle idea is cute but the Kindle screen can't display nice ads like the paper and that's the crux of the problem.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Realistic Pricing
I'm not sure how you're reading that report, but I'm sorry, the distribution cost is not smaller than the editorial cost. I've never heard anyone claim that about any newspaper ever, and I'm a little astonished that you are claiming it here.
As far as the issue with ads not paying the freight online, yeah, I know that's the problem - but I don't think that problem will be solved by making your website less appealing to advertisers and pretending that print revenue is going to continue to carry the industry. I mean, do you really believe that's true? So you really think that newspapers can continue to thrive while print readership shrinks across the board without figuring out how to make advertising work online? Just how many people do you expect to sign up for this paywall? Because it would have to be a hell of a lot to be more than drop in the bucket of their overall revenue.
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Re: Re: Realistic Pricing
At $15 a month for "cross platform web access", the NYT online is sitting at $180 a year. That is right in line with other players.
If you want consider the print version as "part of the deal", you would first have to consider the different newsstand prices, as well as number of distribution days and such to really figure out what is going on.
I think you are trying to make excuses for the fact that the numbers presented are misleading, a hard slam against the NYT when it isn't merited.
Don't you have a real job for another newspaper? Could it be that you are trying to save your own job by making the competition look bad?
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Re: Re: Re: Realistic Pricing
And that package is not truly "cross-platform" because it blocks their native iPad app, which in my mind is indefensible and ridiculous, so I made the conscious decision to ignore that number and focus on the only one that matters (and the only one that should exist): the price of true full access.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Realistic Pricing
Nice move. Mike has taught you well. When you don't like something, ignore it.
Don't you have a real job to do?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Realistic Pricing
Don't you have any job to do? Or is your only goal in life to be a pain in the ass? (If so: job well done, friend, job well done)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Realistic Pricing
Personally I'm just happy to see that Mike has found someone else willing to write for this. My only question is whether he's actually paying him in cash. Mike could be using the Arianna Huffington approach of convincing him that he's getting "exposure". Then Mike can keep the astroturfing cash for himself.
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Re: Realistic Pricing
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NYT
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Re: NYT
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bogus chart
First off, Netflix continues to lose films from their direct download option because the content companies can't afford to take part any longer. If you want the newer stuff-- the kind of content that the NYT includes in their plan-- you've got to get DVDs. And if you want to have a decent stream, you need to get three or more. Remember you want to be able to watch on three devices simulataneously. That pushes the price well above $20/month. And Netflix doesn't serve the newest content. That requires pay-per-view which is much more expensive.
I could go on and on. Most people who buy cable get monthly bills well above $50-70 and they often pay more if they want to watch on three screens separately. But old deGusta doesn't include that option on purpose because that would make the NYT look cheap.
Software? It's easy to buy two or three things on your iPad and spend more than $15 a month. But again, he only wants to compare it with online backup services. Geez, why doesn't he compare it to grains of rice. That will make the NYT look infinitely expensive.
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Re: bogus chart
Also about netflix losing streams? Source please? All I see is an ever-increasing number of studios clamoring to keep their content relevant by putting it up on netflix:
http://netflix.mediaroom.com/
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Re: Re: bogus chart
Source? I watch my queue and on March 1st I got cut off from a movie that I paused in February. My instant queue got shorter. As it is, only about 20-30% of the films in my DVD queue are available for instant download and they're almost all very old ones.
And your price of $8.99 is not right at all. It's $8 for online only and $10/month for one dvd. But since the chart insists on finding the most expensive NYT option it could, it's only fair to use the 3 disk version of Netflix which is $20/month. That's what you need to be able to watch DVDs on three different devices.
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Re: bogus chart
You failed to realize that all plans listed are the most expensive ones, not the cheapest. The $15/mth is only for web and mobile app. It's another $20 for iPad.
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Re: Re: bogus chart
The market is still working through the right packaging. Many of the cable channels are blocking watching on the iPad altogether. They're working out the price.
It's just unfair to add up as many prices as possible to create this graph for the NY Times and not do the same to the other packages.
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Re: Re: Re: bogus chart
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Re: Re: Re: bogus chart
http://theunderstatement.com/post/4019228737/digital-subscription-prices-visualized-aka-th e-new
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Re: bogus chart
How the hell does it cost them money to take part? Or are you implying that taking part costs them (expensive physical media) sales they would have made were their product not available to (cheaply) stream
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Re: Re: bogus chart
My guess is that the DVD sales are important. DVD sales have been falling and the studios are probably realizing that they made more money with DVD sales than with streaming. That's why they're pulling films from the Netflix queues.
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Re: Re: Re: bogus chart
Better to assume they just want to protect DVD sales because that's what they know, not because of revenue.
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Don't forget the mobile web
I agree generally on the pricing - but I argued last week that it is designed to drive audience to the mobile Web as much as it is to protect print:
http://dmk.im/dHZRFz
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Re: Don't forget the mobile web
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the paywall
None of this work was outsourced NYT has a pretty large programming group.
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Rationality
You nailed it, Mike, and there is nothing crazy in the NYTimes' logic.
In Dan Ariely's book, "Predictably Irrational", in the first chapter entitled "The Truth About Relativity", nearly the exact same situation is used to illustrate the industry's "sleight of hand" technique (his real world example was taken from an actual Economist.com subscription scheme). Its purpose is to set up a situation where the act of comparing prices from a given set will adjust the perceived value of the products in the set. The trap is set when a person is not rational enough to step outside of the price scheme to think about the real value of the products in question (I imagine that most readers/writers here are rational enough, or we'd not be having this discussion).
Those who peruse the new price scheme that the NYTimes has set up are induced to believe that the best subscription plan is going to deliver the most savings. Most interestingly, the set we're given by nytimes.com doesn't even mention the route of print+online that is being discussed here. Instead, what you see there are three choices: online+smartphone, online+tablet, all digital access. According to Ariely, an extra choice added to the mix (particularly a third) will function as a "decoy" by adding perceived value to one or more of the others. Nytimes.com helps us out by pointing to the all digital access plan as the one with the "BEST VALUE", in gold lettering.
If the NYTimes had added the fourth choice of print at this point, they may have sweetened the milk by adding a choice which, in that particular set, would have been perceived as having the most value. And there isn't so much value for the NYTimes if it purposefully sets itself up to spend more by offering print. However, in the long run, they will probably have no other choice than to openly add the fourth choice to the mix as a less profitable way to bolster the paywall, as enticement to new customers and incentive for old.
Except I disagree with Mike's statement that "everyone is having a hard time figuring out exactly what they hope to accomplish". I think their hopes are obvious: that the old models continue to work. That anyone would do the work to compare print price to digital, NYTimes probably had hoped wouldn't happen, but we've still played into their game of comparing a set of prices and then noting that one of them screams "$100 savings". And I'm willing to bet that quite a few have decided to cash in on that. But the NYTimes' continued belief that the old models will continue working, that people are going to fall into the well at all, does seem a penny wish wasted.
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The actual web-combo pricing
"@marcuscarab NYTweb+mobile =$192/yr. NYTweb+(iPad or Kindle) =$240/yr. Less-$ than print still. ? http://bit.ly/kwnytwall "
Well, I do have more space here so it's:
1. NYT web + mobile phones = $15 every 4 wks (not a month)
I used $16/mo. then. Total $192/yr.
2. NYT web + iPad OR Kindle = $20 per month = $240/yr.
3. Only if you wanted NYT web AND a variety of devices would it cost $35/mo.
So you and Mike should probably feel better about it...
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