Newspaper's Paywall Experiment Results in 35 Subs In Three Months

[engine]

Newspaper's Paywall Experiment Results in 35 Subs In Three Months [observer.com]

The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect?

So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?

The answer: 35 people.

Earlier story

The New York Times to Charge for Frequent Access [webmasterworld.com]

[Rugles]

I would think getting 35 people to pay $5 per week is a great success. I would have guessed between zero and one customers would pay for news they can already get for free all over the web.

[StoutFiles]

How many of those people have connections with the paper though? Family members writing articles, actual employees, etc.

[Rugles]

Hope this is the death of this silly notion by the NY Times.

[ken_b]

Those 35 are hardly the whole story.

Anyone who has a newspaper subscription is allowed free access; anyone who has Optimum Cable, ... also gets it free. ... representatives claim that 75 percent of Long Island either has a subscription or Optimum Cable.

[engine]

That's still quite a lot of money for a sub for news.

Make it much cheaper and I think they'd bring in more.

It's like I said previously, the newspaper moguls think they can rake in the profits like they used to when newspapers were the main source of news. They need to set the bar lower and go for volume, not high rates.

[Syzygy]

Actually, what I think the newspaper moguls ought to be doing is looking at acquisitions. The volume-based business model will no longer work in the newspaper industry: there are too many alternatives for news of any kind and the markets are fragmented. Better to start quietly acquiring the top performers in niche sectors with growth potential - online, I'm talking about - and have one's fingers in many proverbial pies.

Once you've swallowed sufficient niche players the strategy then will be to consolidate. Hey presto, you suddenly find you have an online media empire!

Syzygy