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Levi Asher isn’t believing the NYT’s declaration that it’s going to build a pay wall:
New York Times management knows that a web paywall is a bad business move right now. The market is not strong for paid content and there is no foreseeable way they will profit from this. Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch ran the numbers, and his findings are quite conclusive. Even in the best case scenario, the added revenue from a few hundred thousand annual subscription fees will not add up to a significant amount on the New York Times balance sheet. And it certainly will reduce pageviews.
Meanwhile, the major Long Island newspaper Newsday’s recent payment plan has just been inadvertently revealed to be a disaster. 35 subscriptions sold. Total.
I say the New York Times is fronting with their paywall press release. They have no plan for really risking their advertiser revenue, for exactly the reasons TechCrunch states above. The real goal of their press release was the press release itself.
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Chad . . . is a nice guy. But to think that the Long Island local is equivalent to the NY Times is ridiculous. If the Times pulls a Pandora — offering free content until you’ve read X / month, or a small fee per year for 100% free content — my bet is on the Times. It keeps ad revenue and gets subscribers for every day readers.
Point taken. I happen to side more with you than Levi in this one. (Someone’s got to figure out how to make a pay wall model work online.)
But tell me you didn’t smirk a little at that 35 figure.
I did. Must have been some long days for their web marketing folks. But, for all we know that was double their print readership!
Somebody will figure out the right volume / value equation to make money. The Times are as good a bet as any to do it.