Paid content walls rarely work and when the New York Times began Times Select two years ago, putting most of its content behind a paid subscription, I cringed. Admitting the experiment did not work, as of Tuesday at midnight, the Times wall crumbles.
The newspaper said the TimesSelect project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.
“But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site, NYTimes.com.
What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYtimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to gain access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.
September 17, 2007 at 7:47 pm |
[...] Times Select Finally Dies « Cheaper than therapy Uncle Fester nails it — the last gasp of paid content dies tomorrow. Yay. Cost walls are so Jurassic. “Paid content walls rarely work and when the New York Times began Times Select two years, putting most of its content behind a paid subscription, I cringed. Admitting the experiment did not work, as of Tuesday at midnight, the Times wall crumbles.” [...]