June 7, 2011
ISN'T THIS PURELY A PSYCHOLOGICAL MATTER?:
Why Newspaper Paywalls Are Still a Bad Idea: They may work at big papers, but at smaller publications, cordoning off content invites online competitors to provide the material for free (Mathew Ingram, 6/06/11, Business Week)
A month or so after it launched its paywall, the newspaper said it had racked up about 100,000 new subscribers, and NYT executives have said the paper hopes to increase that figure to about 300,000 by the end of the year. Despite those rosy numbers, however, even an optimistic view of the paywall's financial outcome produces only $35 million or so in revenue—a drop in the bucket for a media company whose overall revenue is more than $500 million.According to Reuters media blogger Felix Salmon:"I hear that the brass at the New York Times expect its paywall to be revenue neutral—the amount of money they expect to bring in from online subscriptions is pretty much equal to the amount of money they expect to lose from online advertising."
They'd rather have fewer people read the content, but charge for it like it's still a newspaper, than just make their money off of more people looking at the ads, like tv.
Posted by oj at June 7, 2011 5:49 AM
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