How Do The NY Times Paywall Results Compare To Its Last Paywall?
from the looking-similar dept
One of the oddities in the NY Times introducing its recent emperor's new paywall is the fact that the NYT already played this game and failed a few years ago. Back in 2006, over a year before the NYT finally realized this was a dumb idea, we had pointed out that it appeared its subscriber numbers had totally plateaued, foreshadowing the end of the paywall. I was reminded of that after some were saying that the NYT's recent announcement of 100,000 subscribers to its (still discounted) paywall shows that it's on a path to success.With that in mind, it's fascinating to see Joshua Benton, over at the Nieman Lab, compare the results of the TimesSelect paywall with this new paywall, and suggest that the initial results aren't really that impressive in that they track the results from last time. After scouring reports to find out how many people signed up for TimesSelect, he put together this chart that shows the clear plateau:
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: paywall, results, timesselect
Companies: ny times
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
...and it doesn't even work reliably
Fortunately, for Safari uses, there's a *built in workaround*: Just click the "Reader" button.
There are so many levels on which the Times just doesn't get it. They pissed off a very long time subscriber, wasted support costs (non-trivial, if you look at general industry costs) for *two* calls, the second of which was just a complaint that it didn't work - and ended up with another person who now knows how to get around their code when she needs to.
-- Jerry
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Why bother?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Why bother?
A couple days ago a woman tried to give me a "free paper". I looked at her like she was trying to hand me a rotting dead fish. The conclusion I came to was, free doesn't work for scarce goods that nobody wants.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Really?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Really?
But it is their right to bundle. Just like I can't buy one NHL Playoff game on Versus, I have to get the whole thing.
Perhaps they've done the math and it makes sense for them. But they don't get me.
Re: The NYTimes. I dropped their app on my iPad and I am finding I don't miss it so much. Some of my RSS bundler apps give me unlimited NYTimes articles (other bundler apps stop me at 20 -- not sure what the difference is under the hood). But I am finding I am relying more on the Washington Post and other media sources now through those bundler apps.
Life will go on and the market will find some sort of equilibrium.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Really?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The NYTimes is of course a fabulous read, and their blogs are managed to be very readable and most enjoyable.
The hawk-cam on City Room with eggs perhaps to soon hatch is marvelous.
But they do not have a single ad running on those links that have thus far seen over 25 million viewer minutes on Livestream.
Paywall, schmaywall, they need to sell ads.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]